This week’s other featured books, “Study in Hysteria,” by Kathleen Collins and “Scorched,” by Don Silver, can be found by scrolling down below this post, or by clicking the author’s name on our Authors page.
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THE BOOK: Hope for the Worst
PUBLISHED IN: 2023.
THE AUTHOR: Kate Brandt
THE EDITOR: Melanie Faith THE PUBLISHER: Vine Leaves Press
SUMMARY: Ellie is twenty-four years old, stuck in a dead-end job, and questioning the meaning of life when she meets the much older Calvin. It’s as if her deepest wish has been granted. Star of the Buddhist teaching circuit in New York’s Greenwich Village, his wisdom is exactly what she’s been seeking.
When she becomes the center of his attention, it’s almost pure bliss… until it becomes clear that Calvin expects sex as part of the bargain. At first reluctant, Ellie gradually falls ever more deeply in love, until Calvin is all she can think about.
Calvin’s lectures stress the Buddhist concept of non-attachment, but that doesn’t salve her wounds when he abandons her. Suddenly alone, Ellie must find a way to heal from her loss—but not before devotion to her teacher takes her halfway across the world to Tibet, and puts her life in real danger.
Hope for the Worst asks how far we will go for love, and what happens when we reach our limit. THE BACK STORY: Hope for the Worst is based on my life. I wrote it because I wanted to share some important, and at times paradoxical lessons I’ve learned. Many of us come from a milieu in which religion and spirituality are ridiculed, but I believe we all need spirituality of some kind. I also wanted to show what depression is like from the inside.
WHY THIS TITLE?: Tantra is the Buddhist concept of “everything in the service of enlightenment.” Some Tantric masters used to meditate in charnel grounds and have sex with prostitutes–the idea was to use all passions as energy for enlightenment. I chose Hope for the Worst as a title in reference to this idea…that the disasters that happen to us also teach us.
WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT?Read Hope for the Worst if you have ever been in love, had your heart broken, experienced severe depression, wondered what it was all about, or love beautiful writing. This book is about love and pain and redemption. It asks the big questions.
REVIEW COMMENTS: A Buddhist seeker’s painful journey…ultimately illuminating….keen perception and frank self-awareness..spare, direct writing style and pithy descriptions of people and places vividly portray late-1980s New York City…[and] draw the reader in.–Kirkus Reviews
Ellie’s transformation is something to witness, making this book well worth the read. –Regina Allen, Story Circle Network AUTHOR PROFILE: I am a writer and adult literacy teacher in New York City, a career I have had since 1990. I hold an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. I am lucky to be a member of a group of women writers who are also my best friends–without their eyes and guidance I would never have been able to write this book. I read constantly, mostly literary work, but I love to watch science fiction movies. At this point in my life, I’m verging on being an old cat lady. AUTHOR COMMENTS: This book is both a love story and a coming of age.
SAMPLE:
Dear Calvin,
I’ve stopped sleeping.
I keep thinking about the day in Union Square Park. A weekday afternoon. No leaves on the trees yet but the squirrels were hopping about, and people had disregarded the signs and sat on the grass. You in your blue shirt—with the white beard, your wild man look. People stared at us—they always did when we were together—the age difference. I looked back, not caring.
“Everything is on fire,” you said. “The grass is on fire. The trees are on fire. See those lovers? Burning. And if you think there’s water, the water is on fire too.” I was listening, but there was a question in my mind: why weren’t we in our usual place. Maybe I was already starting to know.
When you told me you weren’t going to see me this summer, everything in me stopped for a moment and held its breath. A woman over at the benches leaned over laughing toward a man with a headband. Cars swished by. A pigeon took off. It couldn’t be the same world, but it was.
“Why?” I asked.
“Out of the country,” you shrugged.
“Where?” I asked, but you wouldn’t tell me. “Can I write? Will it be forwarded?”
“You can write.” Something in me slid away, out of my body.
“I’m in love with you,” I said. “I think of you all the time.” Do you understand what I was trying to say to you? It’s too late. How can you stop it now?
Here is what you did because I know you will not remember. You took up my hand that had been lying in my lap and raised it in the air. You shook it slightly and put it back down.
“I’m sorry.” You looked up at the sky. “I don’t feel that way. It’s almost like an old car—the shocks don’t work anymore.” Then you smiled at me, benign as Santa Claus.
When I lie down in bed, I can’t stop talking to you inside my head. Hours go by. An old apartment and the heat is stifling. I get up and stalk naked through the rooms filled with the orange light from the streetlamps outside on Amsterdam Avenue. I see myself in the mirror: a face that doesn’t mean anything; an orange-tinted ghost.
WHERE TO BUY IT: Hope for the Worst is available on Amazon as a paperback or kindle but can also be bought directly from the Vine Leaves Press website and ordered from local bookstores.
PRICE: $17.99
CONTACT THE AUTHOR: Katebrandt.net, @kbrandtwriter on instagram and twitterReplyForward
SUMMARY: Study in Hysteria revolves around Flora, a woman in her mid-fifties struggling with psychic conflict, a domineering and philandering husband, a distant daughter, a secret foray into psychotherapy, a clandestine and unlikely friendship, and a breast cancer diagnosis. The title alludes to Freud’s 1895 case study collection, Studies on Hysteria. The central theme of the novel is distilled in Freud’s directive to a patient that the goal of analysis is “turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness” rather than the wholesale erasure of suffering. The field of psychiatry is a thread throughout the novel, used as an element to illustrate cultural trends and mores and to characterize Flora’s husband, Will, a prominent psychiatrist.
The novel takes place in a four-month period during the early 1970s when women working outside the home was not the norm, especially among the upper middle class demographic to which Flora belongs, and interest in self-actualization and psychology was at a peak, both issues that are central to Flora’s journey. Flora’s struggle is overcoming her resistance to sharing herself with those who love her and the easy temptation to isolate and avoid conflict. Her depression is not a clinical, diagnosed condition, but a malaise, Freud’s “common unhappiness,” also known as the human condition. These internal struggles are set in the context of the burgeoning women’s movement, and Flora’s arc cannot be separated from those external forces. By the novel’s end, her conflicts are eased by the “sisterhood” in her life and, to a more nuanced degree, in the culture at large.
THE BACK STORY: (see author comments)
WHY THIS TITLE: The title is a reference to Freud and Breuer’s 1895 Studies in Hysteria, a collection of case studies on women. It’s tongue in cheek! Flora is not hysterical, nor are most of the women who were branded with that diagnosis. It highlights the sexist culture where women are not listened to or understood on their own terms but rather against a male-dominated, somewhat arbitrary set of standards.
WHY SOMEONE WOULD WANT TO READ IT: This story will resonate with readers who are thoughtful about the way different generations react to changing values, an issue that is currently at the forefront of the cultural discourse.
The story and characters will appeal to women of all ages, though especially to those aged 35 and older. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout is the most direct inspiration for my character-driven writing. My style and tone is similar to other writers who describe the interior, complex lives of women, e.g. Lydia Millet, Alice Munro, Tessa Hadley, Alison Lurie, Sigrid Nunez, Emma Cline, and Margot Livesey. Though the characters have quite different circumstances, the sensibility and perspective is similar to that of Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Meg Wolitzer’s The Wife, Anna Burns’s Milkman, and Rachel Joyce’s Maureen.
REVIEW COMMENTS:
“Compelling, surprising, and witty, Study in Hysteria is the story of Flora Rose, a woman who struggles to understand her role as a wife and mother, as desperately as she seeks to understand herself. Married to Will, a confident psychiatrist who easily extracts his patients’ darkest truths, Flora conceals her own secrets, including feelings of aimlessness and shame that quietly isolate her from the people she needs most. Collins has written an exquisite novel about the painful consequences of repressing emotions, the deep rifts caused by the fear of revealing ourselves, and the unexpected ways the heart finds to heal. A heartbreakingly beautiful debut.” -Sandra Miller, Author of Wednesdays at One
“In Study in Hysteria, Kathleen Collins crafts a nuanced psychological portrait of an indelible character and the complex era that shapes her. In gorgeous prose, richly rendered and perfectly precise, Study in Hysteria explores how we come to know ourselves through our closest relationships as well as the broader social and cultural forces of our time. I loved reading and thinking about this intelligent, engrossing book.” -Heidi Diehl, Author of Lifelines
“In shimmering prose, Kathleen Collins gives us Flora, a woman who spends nearly a lifetime meeting — or not meeting — everyone’s expectations without ever realizing she has deeply-held expectations of her own. As she tries to navigate mid-century wife-and-motherhood, feminism takes hold of the world around her, and Flora too. Reading Studies in Hysteria is like turning the pages of a photo album, showing how memory happens: first blurry and fragmented but ultimately revealing a clear and true imperative: live your life, now.” -Stephanie Gangi, Author of Carry the Dog
“Set in the 1970s, Study in Hysteria is a thoroughly novelistic story of a woman’s domestic confinement—subject to her psychiatrist husband’s arch diagnoses. Flora Rose is heir to Henry James’s Isabel Archer, Edith Wharton’s Lily Bart, Sylvia Plath’s Esther Greenwood—and distant, well-to-do cousin to All in the Family’s Edith Bunker. Collins’s elegantly woven prose reads like a brocade of one woman’s feelings in a sexist world, a woman for whom silence is rebellion. Collins’s psychological acuity manages to feel both classic and thoroughly contemporary.” – Jason Tougaw, Author of The One You Get
AUTHOR COMMENTS: This is a story based on the imagined inner life of my grandmother in the early 1970s. It’s personal and indulgent (time travel! spending time with my grandmother! the 1970s!) but I have to think that the thoughts revealed by Flora are shared by legions of women, then and now. This is my first novel after several nonfiction books, and in an odd way, I feel like it’s the truest of the bunch.
SUMMARY: After his father dies suddenly and his family’s fortune takes a nosedive, Jonas Shore starts selling weed and pills to cool kids at his Philadelphia high school to support himself and his mother; that is, until his hustle catches up with him and he’s sent away to Lafayette Academy.
In this testosterone-fueled boarding school for fatherless boys, Jonas learns how to survive. He and his roommates form a tight unit, vowing to have each others’ backs for life, but their bond is tested after a brush with death threatens to rob them of their futures.
Two decades later, Jonas is balancing a family and several successful businesses when one of his old Lafayette pals shows up with ghosts from the past, threatening to destroy everything he’s built.
Set to a killer soundtrack with Zeppelin, Bowie and Philly R&B, “Scorched” is an engrossing portrait of a young man’s coming-of-age and a gripping look at what happens when he tries to outrun his past.
THE BACK STORY: “Scorched” took around seven years of writing and editing. It started with a premise that came from an old buddy. He’d actually been giving me ideas for novels since we were in seventh grade and I’d pretty much stopped paying attention, but this one was cool so I worked with it for about a year. Once I had the characters, setting, narrative strategy, and backstory, I was drawn in a different direction.
“Scorched” begins as a story about adolescents. Halfway in, I really wanted to find out what happened to these people as a result of their childhoods so the narrative jumps 20 years forward to them at midlife. There is a violent event that happens that has repercussions in the future and the pace of the book picks up and morphs into a thriller.
Once I finished, I could see some pieces of my own life – coming of age in the early 1970s, a friend who, as a teenager, argued with his dad the day before he died and carried the guilt. A few women who gave up their career dreams to have kids and felt stuck at mid-life. But while I was writing this, I felt very much in somebody else’s world.
WHY THIS TITLE?: “Scorched” is a metaphor for what seems to be the mental state of the protagonist, Jonas, who is a bit of a hothead, and for important relationships that seem volatile.
WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? I hope “Scorched” will appeal to readers who like to get inside people’s heads. And to people who like having a glimpse into what it was like to come of age in the mid-1970s. It also explores the impact of mental illness on an individual and on the people around them.
AUTHOR PROFILE: Don Silver has been a musician, talent scout for a record company, record producer, business person, and consultant to CEOs. He has an MFA from Bennington College. His first novel, “Backward-Facing Man,” published by Ecco/HarperCollins, was hailed as “memorably offbeat” (New York Times) and “illuminating and entertaining” (Pittsburgh Tribune). His second novel, “Scorched,” will be released in May 2024. Originally from Philadelphia, Don lives in Asheville, NC. Learn more at http://www.donsilver.net.
AUTHOR COMMENTS: I hoped to write a fast-paced, gripping read that lingers for a few days after you finish.
Ellie is twenty-four years old, stuck in a dead-end job, and questioning the meaning of life when she meets the much older Calvin. It’s as if her deepest wish has been granted. Star of the Buddhist teaching circuit in New York’s Greenwich Village, his wisdom is exactly what she’s been seeking.
When she becomes the center of his attention, it’s almost pure bliss… until it becomes clear that Calvin expects sex as part of the bargain. At first reluctant, Ellie gradually falls ever more deeply in love, until Calvin is all she can think about.
Calvin’s lectures stress the Buddhist concept of non-attachment, but that doesn’t salve her wounds when he abandons her. Suddenly alone, Ellie must find a way to heal from her loss—but not before devotion to her teacher takes her halfway across the world to Tibet, and puts her life in real danger.
“STUDY IN HYSTERIA,” By KATHLEEN COLLINS.
Study in Hysteria revolves around Flora, a woman in her mid-fifties struggling with psychic conflict, a domineering and philandering husband, a distant daughter, a secret foray into psychotherapy, a clandestine and unlikely friendship, and a breast cancer diagnosis. The title alludes to Freud’s 1895 case study collection, Studies on Hysteria. The central theme of the novel is distilled in Freud’s directive to a patient that the goal of analysis is “turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness” rather than the wholesale erasure of suffering. The field of psychiatry is a thread throughout the novel, used as an element to illustrate cultural trends and mores and to characterize Flora’s husband, Will, a prominent psychiatrist.
“SCORCHED,” BY DON SILVER.
After his father dies suddenly and his family’s fortune takes a nosedive, Jonas Shore starts selling weed and pills to cool kids at his Philadelphia high school to support himself and his mother; that is, until his hustle catches up with him and he’s sent away to Lafayette Academy.
In this testosterone-fueled boarding school for fatherless boys, Jonas learns how to survive. He and his roommates form a tight unit, vowing to have each others’ backs for life, but their bond is tested after a brush with death threatens to rob them of their futures.
Two decades later, Jonas is balancing a family and several successful businesses when one of his old Lafayette pals shows up with ghosts from the past, threatening to destroy everything he’s built.
Set to a killer soundtrack with Zeppelin, Bowie and Philly R&B, “Scorched” is an engrossing portrait of a young man’s coming-of-age and a gripping look at what happens when he tries to outrun his past.
This week’s other featured books, “The States,” by Norah Woodsey, “Pool Parties,” by Jennifer MacBain-Stephens and “Let Evening Come.” by Yvonne Osborne, can be found by scrolling down below this post, or by clicking the author’s name on our Authors page.
THE BOOK: A Year in the Life of Death.
PUBLISHED IN: 2021.
THE AUTHOR: Shawn Levy. THE EDITOR: Eve Connell. Greg Gerding. THE PUBLISHER: University of Hell Press, an indie outfit in Portland, Oregon.
SUMMARY: 100 poems derived from a single year (2016) of reading the obituaries in the print edition of The New York Times: a selection of great and obscure lives, remarkable deeds, painful memories, jokes (hey: it’s death; you gotta laugh!), and ruminations on mortality, morality, and happenstance. Among the celebrated souls lost that year, all of whom appear in the book: David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Merle Haggard, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, Muhammad Ali, Arnold Palmer, Mary Tyler Moore, Nancy Reagan, the guy who put the ‘@’ in email addresses, the guys who invented the Big Mac and General Tso’s Chicken, and two cast members each from The Patty Duke Show and Barney Miller. The poems are a kind of cross between odes and puzzles: Each one ends with the headline from the Times, with the person’s name and age and accomplishment in brief, so reading them is a kind of unboxing.
THE BACK STORY: At the end of 2015, I got the idea that I could write a poem a day based on a prompt in the Times‘ obit pages, and I began small. But then the famous people fell in waves (the Times actually ran a story saying that, in fact, an inordinate number of A-listers had died that year) and it began to seem more monumental. I worked throughout 2016 and on into 2020, sorting through 365 days of paper (actual paper!) to choose the final 100 poems, and then editing with Eve Connell and Greg Gerding of UHell Press.
WHY THIS TITLE?: This was one of those moments when a phrase entered my head and was so obviously inspired that I simply wrote it down and declared ‘finis‘! I had been calling the book The Obit Poems and then, in 2020, discovered a brilliant book by Victoria Chang called Obit, which also depended on the newspaper obituary form, but in a very different way. I had to hustle up a new title and was chewing possibilities over with my partner, when: voila.” WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? I think of the book as a personal, offbeat alternative pop history of the 20th century in curiously random but telling slices. In poems. If that sings to you, hurrah!
REVIEW COMMENTS:
“A wailing song, with side eye when and where you need it. These poems are a resuscitation of art and heart.” —Lidia Yuknavitch
“An ode to readership—to the transportive experience made available to a human who picks up a newspaper with an open heart and a broad imagination, ready to treasure the stories of other humans.” —Elena Passarello
“In the emotional cacophony of the transitional era that seems to have been initiated by 2016, some code seems to be embedded in these losses, and in their reportorial summaries, which only Shawn Levy in his brilliantly angular perspective could have decoded.” —Ed Skoog
“With his gimlet eye and big heart, Levy takes us on a backstage tour of our own popular culture. As much as these poems eulogize and lionize, they also revise and scrutinize, each with a kind of unboxing at the end. The effect is original, and the book exudes that rarest of all qualities in poetry: fun.” —Dobby Gibson
AUTHOR PROFILE: I’m the author of a dozen books, mostly biographies (Paul Newman, Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis) and pop culture histories (the Chateau Marmont, ’50s Rome, ’60s London, Rat Pack Vegas), a podcaster, a longtime film critic and journalist, a genuine poetry lover, a soccer nut, a seven-time veteran of Burning Man, a karaoke glutton, a Vespa rider, and a proud Portlander.
SAMPLE
He knows where you are
And, more important,
Where you’ll be,
And when
He comes, well,
There you go.
You can’t avoid him.
Not a dozen
In all the myths of Earth
Have ascended without end,
And they were the likes
Of Hercules, Elijah,
Mary, Simon Magus,
And sundry prophets and swamis.
Not, in short, good odds
For us mortals.
So you’re his, face it,
But only at a point
And only to a point,
Because, like a sharp,
You can shape the hand he deals you
Into the pieces of a riddle
And turn it back on him.
He’ll solve it, know that,
And when he does
He can have you
As you will be had:
Wailing, cowing, ruing, begging, already gone,
Or dancing, laughing,
Dressed like a duke,
With the taste of birthday cake on your lips,
Dropping a big old art bomb
As you slip out from a world
Which will always have you in it
And alive.
David Bowie, Star Whose Fame Transcended Music, Dies at 69
CONTACT THE AUTHOR: You can find me on Bluesky and Twitter (@shawnlevy) and Instagram (@shawnanthonylevy). My web site shawnlevy.com gathers a lot of stuff, as well, though it’s not super-active.
SUMMARY: The States is a speculative reimagining of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, a story of love, obligation, and second chances.
Tildy Sullivan, our protagonist, is the middle child in an elite yet fading Manhattan family. Her quiet practicality hides her deep, profound longing for childhood summers in western Ireland. She also carries a secret regret. After her mother’s death 8 years ago, she was persuaded by her family to abandon Ireland and the love of a local boy. Now she believes happiness is lost to her.
When Tildy volunteers for a lucid dreaming experiment, it gives her all she wants – a life lived for her family during the day and a secret, perfect Ireland of her own at night. As she lives her nights in one place, and her days in another, she must decide – will she face reality, or succumb to the ease of her dreams?
THE BACK STORY: This began as a NaNoWriMo project in 2020. I was in the middle of finishing my third book, The Control Problem, a novel on darker topics and I wanted to write something uplifting. Nearly all the dream sequences in The States come from that NaNoWriMo. After The Control Problem was released, I took a fresh look at proto-The States and saw that what was best in it was Persuasion, Jane Austen’s beloved classic. I bought a new paperback copy, read it multiple times and took many notes in the margins. Then I took apart my NaNoWriMO and inserted all the new material – Tildy’s elite father and sisters, a Mr. Elliot and a Miss Smith, all the other characters I loved from the original. I folded in more exploration of Tildy’s mother, the Lady Elliot of the original novel. Her near-total absence in the original felt so striking during my analysis. I hired a translator for Irish passages; my grasp of the language is rudimentary. In the end, the whole project ended up being more work than I expected. I wish I had started the project from scratch with this retelling in mind, but I’m happy with the results.
WHY THIS TITLE?: It’s sort of a double reference. The Irish people I know refer to the United States as “The States”. And since Tildy relies on a dream experiment to envision her future, it also refers to “the states of consciousness.”
WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? I think most people enjoy a good love story, and I hope The States is one, but I also tried to share with the reader my love of Galway and the people there. Some of my favorite passages are of Aidan’s friends bantering with one another. The book is also a story of being out of place. I think many Americans, and certainly most children of immigrants, can identify with the isolation that comes from imperfectly belonging in the country of your birth, but also not belonging in your parent’s country of origin. While the core of the story is about romantic love, it is also about forging your own path to belonging. About the journey of letting go of the things that hold you back, both internal and external, and finding happiness on your own terms.
REVIEW COMMENTS:
“A beautiful and thoughtful modernization of Jane Austen’s Persuasion that explores a modern heroine’s discovery of the difference between fantasy and agency.” – IndieReader
“An inventive novel about wishes and regret.” – Kirkus
“Woodsey’s writing style is engaging, and her characters are relatable, making the book a joy to read from start to finish.” – Suzie Housley, Midwest Book Review
“Eloquent and alluring, The States is a novel in which dreams crash into lived realities.” – Foreword Reviews
AUTHOR PROFILE: I’m an Irish-American from Brooklyn, New York, but unlike the novel, I am not the child of any sort of capitalist scion– my mom was a nurse and my dad was a locksmith. I worked in content moderation in the tech industry for a long time, before switching to writing fiction. Most of my work is science fiction, more in line with what I studied in college. For the time being, I live outside of San Francisco with my husband and our children.
I’ve loved Jane Austen books since I was a child, though I came to Persuasion in college, and it is now my favorite. I put all my love for the novel into this book, which I hope stands on its own as well as being a retelling.
AUTHOR COMMENTS: Even if you aren’t the daughter of a baronet or a cosmetics brand executive, I think many people feel pressure to live for their parents in a way that stunts their own growth. Families can become ecosystems that feed all energy and resources into one person. The original Persuasion is a classic example of the timelessness of this dynamic. Anne gave up what would have given her joy, love, and independence in deference to a family who only sees her as a cog in the family machine. I tried to capture that in this novel, and I hope I was successful.
SAMPLE:
The memories of that last summer were worn but intact. Each moment lived in her as a cherished friend. The scratchy voice on Nana’s radio had warned of flooding – a huge storm on the horizon, sweeping in from the ocean to the western coast, had pushed against the sea. In a rush to beat the storm, she’d kissed her mother and Nana goodbye, then peddled a rusted bicycle away from the cottage, over animal paths. The destination: a secret place, a vacant property midway between his home and Nana’s.
In a snow globe within her heart, she and Aidan still stood there, beside the abandoned cottage, a cool wind whipping her hair as he smiled down at her, his smooth freckled face wearing pure affection, just for her. Tildy blushed, recalling his fingertips tracing the curves of her face. There was nothing embarrassing or awkward. It had been her closest experience to true love. They had talked about their futures. He’d asked her to stay, asked her to call, asked her to write, but her life fell apart. She left. She never wrote. She never called. And he was lost to her, given up when so much had been taken away.
WHERE TO BUY IT: Currently available for pre-order on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook formats, and in ebook format through Apple, Amazon, and Kobo.
PRICE: $9.99 ebook, $15 paperback
CONTACT THE AUTHOR: Publicity inquiries can be directed to Simone Jung at BooksForward. Otherwise, I can be reached through the contact form on my website:https://norahwoodsey.com/contact
You can find me on Instagram: instagram.com/nwoodsey or BlueSky: bsky.app/profile/norahwoodsey.bsky.social
THE PUBLISHER: Founded in 2012, Unsolicited Press (living the dream in Portland, Oregon) focuses on the works of the unsung and underrepresented. As a womxn-owned small publisher that doesn’t worry about profits as much as championing exceptional literature, they have the privilege of partnering with authors skirting the fringes of the lit world. Their authors have gone on to be nominated for and/or win awards such as the Push Cart Prize, Ohioana Book Award, Pen/Faulkner Award, International Book Award, Eric Hoffer Book Award, LAMBDA, Independent Press Award, NYC Big Book Award, and many more. The vibe at Unsolicited Press is rebellious, relentless, and philanthropic. All of the net profit is funneled back into the business to maintain operations. Additionally, they love supporting non-profits that are doing so much good by donating a portion of our proceeds to support their missions. They embrace being quirky and love helping authors launch and/or further their writing careers.
SUMMARY: In a post pandemic world, how do we rebuild what is broken? Pool Parties dives into dinosaurs, pop culture, hospital beds, barnacles, geology, and the soil of the Midwest to dig through and sift our aching to heal psyche. Found poems about crystals, Sabrina the teenage witch, and building trails are just some of the topics of these playful yet sometimes dark poems. Once shielding ourselves from the world in tiny boxes, we now long to break the glass, feel the sun, and one another, but it is scary. Try to connect we must, if we fail, we must fail better. What rooms are our safe spaces? What woods? From Ranch for Sale, As is: “In the god trees you disappeared into Port wine and too many off ramp brown eye role playing games. My heart in a 1960s ranch style basement. Thought you’d come in, shake out the red and white checkered tablecloth, pull aside the daisy patterned curtains.” MacBain-Stephens invites us to dive into the deep end of the pool where it is always too cold at first. We don’t trust our own pleas for help and need a third operator to repeat our words back to us: “the operator whispers / plays the soundtrack to The Third Man / listens in, but this isn’t Orson Welles in black and white beauty…” (from The Telephone Operator Knows When to Plug in.) Pool Parties is a delicious awkward visit to that place you left too quickly, just when it was getting interesting.
THE BACK STORY: This book is a summary of topics I find myself returning to often: pop culture, art, dealing with isolation, being in nature, trying to connect with other humans, struggling with anxiety.
WHY THIS TITLE?: The book came out at the end of Covid, when everything was far from the carefree attitude and sunny disposition of a pool party, however, a brighter future was being witnessed as well, so it just seemed appropriate.
WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? I’m going to use this great blurb from fellow poet Jessie Janeshek to sum up the book here, as I think she really nailed it:
“Like the mountain bike she rides, Jennifer MacBain Stephens’ poems have never been afraid to bump along darker terrains; when I read her work, I anticipate unpredictable treks that will brake somewhere both completely strange and strangely fascinating. Her new collection Pool Parties “pull[s] a classic cancer of being both on land and in the sea simultaneously” as the poems establish an enviable tension between opposites, tangling the prehistoric and the contemporary, the forest and the city, reality and fantasy, the familiar and the alien. Many of the poems are ekphrastic with subject matter ranging from art exhibits, to novels, to books on crystals, to The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, but I would argue that all of MacBain-Stephens’ work is ekphrastic in the sense of the original ancient Greek definition, “the skill of describing a thing with vivid details.” Whatever she takes on as her subject matter, even if it’s something you thought you knew, MacBain-Stephens can make it new. Like the Greek goddess Persephone, star of her poem “Gone Girl,” the speakers in Pool Parties dip into the darkness, whether it’s underground or underwater, and reemerge into the light. Come party with us. Just bring an inflatable serpent and make sure you can swim.” –Jessie Janeshek, author of No Place for Dames and Madcap
REVIEW COMMENTS: “There is no middle ground here, and we don’t want there to be. From “Ranch for Sale. As is,”: “I’m out of Kleenex and tongue kissing. Are you going to buy the place or not?” I’m sold; sign me up for this nuthouse.” — Elizabeth Vignali, author of Endangered {Animal} and House of the Silverfish.
AUTHOR PROFILE: Jennifer was born in Michigan where due to the “lake effect,” often in the winter, cold air created a blanket of clouds even on days when there wasn’t enough moisture for snow. Extra storms, in addition to the lake effect, keep Michigan gray for most of the cold-weather months. Hence, Jennifer is always at home writing about “final girls,” tarot, the woods, yearning, and nature. At least in Iowa City, Iowa, where she lives now, there is winter sun. She raises her children, works at a science journal, makes collages, and likes to rock climb and bike.
She is also the author of fifteen chapbooks and four other full length poetry collections. Other books and chapbooks can be found at https://jennifermacbainstephens.com’
AUTHOR COMMENTS: If I like something that I wrote, I always like to hear how other people received it! We write because there is a need to, even if the writing ends up in a shoebox under the bed.
SUMMARY: Let Evening Come is the story about the son of an Indigenous family displaced from their ancestral home on the Tar Sands of Canada and a motherless farm girl from Michigan who struggles to overcome loss while navigating the pitfalls of young adulthood. Together they combat suspicion and bigotry on both sides of the border and the cultural differences that separate them.
THE BACK STORY: After her mother is killed in a rogue Northern Michigan tornado, Sadie Wixom is left with only her father and grandfather to guide her through the pitfalls of young adulthood. Hundreds of miles away in western Saskatchewan, Stefan Montegrand and his Indigenous family are forced off their land by multinational energy companies and flawed treaties. They are taken in temporarily by Sadie’s aunt, a human rights activist who heads a cultural exchange program.
Their mutual attraction and struggle for equilibrium is stymied when Stefan’s older brother, Joachim, who stayed behind, becomes embroiled in the resistance, and Stefan is compelled to return to Canada. Sadie, concerned for his safety, impulsively follows on a trajectory doomed by cultural misunderstanding and oncoming winter.
WHY THIS TITLE: It’s from the poem by Jane Kenyon. For the novel, its meaning becomes synonymous with the growing silence and quiet of evening as love and understanding can grow in a time of uncertainty and upheaval.
WHY SOMEONE WOULD WANT TO READ IT: Because discerning readers all care about and want to learn more about those who fight prejudice and bigotry and environmental degradation.
REVIEW COMMENTS:
Let Evening Come is a compelling contemporary Northern coming-of-age tale, gripping in its conflicts and transfixing in its prose. -Dave Essinger, author of Running Out, and Editor, Slippery Elm Literary Journal
Fabulous storyline. Engaging character creation. So well done! This is the type of storyline book that should be made into a movie! Yvonne Osborne hit this out of the park! I so enjoyed reading this book. It was difficult to put down as I became so engrossed in the story and characters.
The writing in this novel is exceptional! I enjoy a story that allows me to experience multiple character perspectives, and I appreciated being able to do that. Sadie and Stefan’s relationship grows as they get to understand one another and face challenges together. I was hooked in from the beginning and had to see how their story ended – couldn’t put it down. A must read! Loved it!
AUTHOR PROFILE: Yvonne Osborne is a 5th generation Michigander who grew up on the family farm under the tutelage of a grandmother who loved Shakespeare before Shakespeare was cool. After college and a stint in the Buckeye State, she and her husband moved back to the farm founded by her great-great-grandfather. Her poetry and short stories can be found in The Slippery Elm Literary Journal, Flapper Press, Third Coast Review, Full of Crow, Midwest Review, Great Lakes Review, and in various anthologies. Let Evening Come is her debut novel. For more, visit her at yvonneosborne.com
AUTHOR COMMENTS: I took 7 years to write this book. As a new author, I am obviously in need of more exposure. An introduction to your thousands of blog readers sounds like a win-win situation
UPCOMING ON SNOWFLAKES IN A BLIZZARD, APRIL 30-MAY 6
“A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF DEATH,” BY SHAWN LEVY.
100 poems derived from a single year (2016) of reading the obituaries in the print edition of The New York Times: a selection of great and obscure lives, remarkable deeds, painful memories, jokes (hey: it’s death; you gotta laugh!), and ruminations on mortality, morality, and happenstance. Among the celebrated souls lost that year, all of whom appear in the book: David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Merle Haggard, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, Muhammad Ali, Arnold Palmer, Mary Tyler Moore, Nancy Reagan, the guy who put the ‘@’ in email addresses, the guys who invented the Big Mac and General Tso’s Chicken, and two cast members each from The Patty Duke Show and Barney Miller. The poems are a kind of cross between odes and puzzles: Each one ends with the headline from the Times, with the person’s name and age and accomplishment in brief, so reading them is a kind of unboxing.
“THE STATES,” BY NORAH WOODSEY.\
The States is a speculative reimagining of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, a story of love, obligation, and second chances.
Tildy Sullivan, our protagonist, is the middle child in an elite yet fading Manhattan family. Her quiet practicality hides her deep, profound longing for childhood summers in western Ireland. She also carries a secret regret. After her mother’s death 8 years ago, she was persuaded by her family to abandon Ireland and the love of a local boy. Now she believes happiness is lost to her.
When Tildy volunteers for a lucid dreaming experiment, it gives her all she wants – a life lived for her family during the day and a secret, perfect Ireland of her own at night. As she lives her nights in one place, and her days in another, she must decide – will she face reality, or succumb to the ease of her dreams?
“POOL PARTIES,” BY JENNIFER MACBAIN-STEPHENS,
Writes one reviewer: Like the mountain bike she rides, Jennifer MacBain Stephens’ poems have never been afraid to bump along darker terrains; when I read her work, I anticipate unpredictable treks that will brake somewhere both completely strange and strangely fascinating. Her new collection Pool Parties “pull[s] a classic cancer of being both on land and in the sea simultaneously” as the poems establish an enviable tension between opposites, tangling the prehistoric and the contemporary, the forest and the city, reality and fantasy, the familiar and the alien. Many of the poems are ekphrastic with subject matter ranging from art exhibits, to novels, to books on crystals, to The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, but I would argue that all of MacBain-Stephens’ work is ekphrastic in the sense of the original ancient Greek definition, “the skill of describing a thing with vivid details.” Whatever she takes on as her subject matter, even if it’s something you thought you knew, MacBain-Stephens can make it new. Like the Greek goddess Persephone, star of her poem “Gone Girl,” the speakers in Pool Parties dip into the darkness, whether it’s underground or underwater, and reemerge into the light. Come party with us. Just bring an inflatable serpent and make sure you can swim.” –Jessie Janeshek, author of No Place for Dames and Madca
“LET EVENING COME,” BY YVONNE OSBORNE.
After her mother is killed in a rogue Northern Michigan tornado, Sadie Wixom is left with only her father and grandfather to guide her through the pitfalls of young adulthood. Hundreds of miles away in western Saskatchewan, Stefan Montegrand and his Indigenous family are forced off their land by multinational energy companies and flawed treaties. They are taken in temporarily by Sadie’s aunt, a human rights activist who heads a cultural exchange program.
Their mutual attraction and struggle for equilibrium is stymied when Stefan’s older brother, Joachim, who stayed behind, becomes embroiled in the resistance, and Stefan is compelled to return to Canada. Sadie, concerned for his safety, impulsively follows on a trajectory doomed by cultural misunderstanding and oncoming winter.
This week’s other featured books, “Weak in Comparison to Dreams,” by James Elkins and “The Present is Past,” by Josh Rank, can be found by scrolling down below this post, or by clicking the author’s name on our Authors page.
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THE BOOK: The War on Sarah Morris.
PUBLISHED IN: 2024.
THE AUTHOR: Kathleen Jones.
THE EDITOR: Glenda MacFarlane (substantive and line editor), Marina Endicott (writing mentor), Allister Thompson (copy editor), Britanie Wilson (proofreader), Laura Boyle (cover designer).
THE PUBLISHER: Jodie Toohey (Legacy Book Press).
SUMMARY: In The War on Sarah Morris, a middle-aged woman struggles to survive in the cruel and ruthless corporate jungle.
What happens when one day, without any warning, your secure corporate job suddenly becomes precarious? And all your professional duties get taken away, leaving you with nothing but repetitive, mind-numbing tasks?
Sarah Morris, a 49-year-old editor at a Toronto book publisher, finds herself in this predicament in October 2010, when Quill Pen Press, the company she has faithfully served for twenty-one years, undergoes a reorganization in the aftermath of the 2008 Recession. Concerned only with preserving her own cushy job, Gillian Martin, Sarah’s selfish boss, gives all of the company’s book editing projects to freelancers and to Derek Witowsky, her pet employee, unofficially demoting Sarah and two of her colleagues, who are now expected to spend their days tagging and formatting documents. When the two younger colleagues leave to pursue better opportunities, Gillian dumps all of their data entry tasks on Sarah and pressures her to complete an ever-growing mountain of work in less and less time, while taking away her right to paid overtime.
At first, Sarah is afraid to face the truth; she tells herself that she will get her old job back once the economy improves. But when Gillian starts bullying her, she realizes that her company doesn’t have her best interests at heart and that she’s been pigeonholed into a dead-end job.
THE BACK STORY: This novel, which took five years to write, was based on my own experiences, so I had the necessary insights to write it. I knew what it was like to work extra hours for no extra pay just to hold onto my job. I knew what disrespect and bullying from bosses felt like, the frustration of working in a tedious job far beneath my abilities without any possibility of promotion, the hopelessness of applying to companies that refuse to hire people over 40, no matter how smart, experienced, or educated they are. And I definitely knew what it was like to shoulder more and more work—more tedious work—without more time and resources to complete it, and to lose control over my time and my life.
WHY THIS TITLE? This title describes the central theme of the book: A corporation (like many modern corporations) is waging war on a long-term employee (Sarah Morris) by bullying her out of a job to save money (by replacing her with a cheaper contract employee). WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? Because it deals with the world that many working people now live in. Because, all too often, the struggles of working people are invisible; most of them, like Sarah, are just trying to survive, and they don’t have the power to fight back against abusive employers. Because the public deserves to know the truth about abusive corporations that misrepresent themselves as caring, enlightened places to work.
REVIEW COMMENTS:
In this tense, funny novel, Sarah Morris, a 49 year-old editor, faces upheaval at the publishing company, Quill Pen Press, where she’s worked for the past 21 years. Though there is no change in her job title or pay, all of her job responsibilities are now different and she is forced to do overtime without pay for new daily tasks that she hates. With a recession ravaging hopes of economic stability, and finding herself her family’s sole income-earner following her husband’s dismissal from his banking job, Sarah must decide what steps she needs to take in her career to find her way back to being happy in the workplace. Does she dare a job search, as she puts it, “In middle age. In a crappy job market … that’s hostile to older people like me”?
Sarah exemplifies the emotional turmoil many feel when facing discontent in the workplace as Jones delves into self-doubt, the fear of starting over, and being complacent in a dead-end job. With wit, snark, and a striking sense of all-too-real realism, Jones writes a relatable and personable narrative about being pigeon-holed and feeling stuck with work that is no longer fulfilling or providing the space or opportunity for advancement. Exploring toxic work cultures, micromanagers, and workplace favoritism, The War on Sarah Morris is punchy and pained, outraged and comic, offering much that readers—especially women working in troubled industries—will find resonant. While set in 2011, the novel feels pointedly of the moment.
Jones convincingly captures the inner workings of a publisher and the ever-increasing responsibilities that fall onto lower level staffers, plus the indignities of a job search, from “biographical resumes” to pop-quiz writing assignments in job interviews. In this, Jones blends the engagingly dishy with sharp-elbowed analysis of power dynamics. Readers who have ever worked under tyrannical managers or for companies who only care about how much money is coming in will be impacted and feel a personal connection to Sarah’s struggle.
Takeaway: Sharp-elbowed novel of a woman facing a job hunt after 20 years in publishing.
Comparable Titles: Lisa Owens’s Not Working, Liz Talley’s Adulting.
Production grades Cover: B+ Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A
Booklife, Publisher’s Weekly, February 2024
THE WAR ON SARAH MORRIS by Kathleen Jones is a realistic and salient portrait of a 21st century working woman’s struggles in the corporate concrete jungle of Toronto. The protagonist takes the reader on a psychological journey of twenty years of toiling at a publishing company that boils down to “long hours, unpaid overtime, bullying bosses, and backstabbing coworkers.” (p. 306) The story opens when Sarah receives an email about the company’s reorganization and list of employee layoffs. References to book proposals, marketing campaigns, book editing and tagging bring the book business to life.
There’s great use of the classic Cassandra Situation, when Sarah tells everyone how bad the daily grind is at her office, but no one believes her. I love the protagonist. She is believable, brave, resilient, and persistent. Despite being surrounded by so much negativity and disrespect, her actions, creativity, and fantasies move her forward to try and try again to cope with misery at work. In the end, I found myself cheering for her as she comes to understand and save herself. Jones creates a story that not only sheds light on the power of the human spirit, but also depicts serious social problems around agism, sexism, and economics in the workplace and job hunt, and how all of it spills over into the quality of life outside of work. An inspiring read full of hard truths! –D.S. Marquis, author, Of School and Women
A workplace drama filled with sass and comedic relief! I loved being in the mind of Sarah and rooting for her to end her misery at a dead-end job. You’ll love this glimpse inside a woman’s fight to save her career and herself. — C. D’Angelo, award-winning author, The Difference and The Visitor.
AUTHOR PROFILE Kathleen Jones is a Toronto-based novelist and former book editor who writes in multiple genres. Her first novel, Love Is the Punch Line, an offbeat, midlife romance set in the world of stand-up comedy, was published by Moonshine Cove in 2018. The book has received several favorable 4- and 5-star reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. She also writes frequent book reviews for Goodreads, Amazon, and LibraryThing. Kathleen lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
AUTHOR COMMENTS: The novel talks about a problem faced by many women, a touchy, sensitive problem that few novels are willing to tackle: the struggle of women in the modern corporate world. The main character, Sarah Morris, is demoted (along with a couple of her co-workers) when the book publisher she works for is reorganized. One day, she’s a skilled, experienced editor who works on manuscripts with authors; the following day, she’s a glorified data entry clerk toiling in a dead-end job, doing repetitive, mind-numbing work, spending hours and hours cutting and pasting data, over and over again. Even worse, her new job comes with unwanted baggage that millions of working women have to cope with: long hours, heavy workloads, unpaid overtime, age discrimination, sexism, bullying from bosses, dirty games and lies, disrespect from co-workers, and stress, stress, stress. But Sarah, overwhelmed and seemingly powerless, hangs onto her dignity and humane values, and finds a way to fight back.
SAMPLE:
CHAPTER ONE
Effective October 4, 2010, the roles of Sarah Morris, Caleb Elliott, and Ramona Duvall will be changing…
Bullshit! This company isn’t “changing the roles” of Caleb, Ramona, and me; it’s taking our roles away, destroying our live- lihoods, our very careers. It’s taking away the work we were hired to do—editing authors’ manuscripts, turning them into polished books—and farming it out to freelancers, a nameless and faceless army with no connection or loyalty to this company. Thanks a lot.
I stare at the email on my computer screen, my mind suddenly flooded with questions.
Why on earth did the company do this to me? Maybe it’s my age. I’m forty-nine, practically a wizened old geezer as far as the business world is concerned. Or maybe I’ve just been at this com- pany too long—twenty-one years, to be exact—and they’re sick to death of me. Or maybe the reason is a lot more personal; my boss, Gillian, has never really liked me. And nine years of slaving under her dictatorship, swallowing her mean-spirited comments while trying, over and over and over again, to please her, haven’t changed her mind, not one iota.
Hmm, do I still even have a job at all? I scan the email, trying hard not to panic. Oh, yes, it looks like I do: Caleb, Ramona, and I will be “processing” documents. Meanwhile, the two women who have been doing all the “processing” for our department will be leaving the company next Friday “to pursue exciting new opportunities.” Exciting new opportunities? On this planet? The last time I watched the news, millions of people were pounding the pavement, looking for work. And Quill Pen Press will save a ton of money once these employees have been kicked out of their jobs and their work has been dumped on Caleb, Ramona, and me.
I want to bash my fist through the screen, strangle the smug words in front of me.
…job titles will not be changing…
Translation: We get to keep our now-empty job titles. From now on, the three of us will be called “editors,” but we will no longer be real editors, just glorified data entry clerks with a fancy name. From now on, the three of us will be spending our days doing hours and hours of mindless, soul-sucking drudgery, pulling data off the Internet, formatting it into documents, tagging the documents. The ugly truth is, we’re being demoted, demoted by a cowardly and sneaky company that doesn’t have the guts to tell us what’s really going on. A company that no longer allows us to edit books, a company that no longer values our minds, our skills, our ideas, our knowledge. A company that no longer allows us to think at work. A company that no longer gives a shit about us.
Right now, I feel so hurt and angry and betrayed, I want to scream.
Farther down, toward the bottom of the screen, the news gets even worse:
Derek Witowsky will continue in his role as Manuscript Editor, working with authors…
Translation: Derek and the nameless and faceless freelance editors will be the only people who will be allowed to edit books at Quill Pen Press.
Of course Derek will continue in his role. He was always “smarter” than the rest of us editors, never failing to point out our mistakes to Gillian (even though we were too polite to point out his), forcing his way of doing things on us (even though the way we had been doing things worked perfectly well), shooting down our ideas at department meetings. Derek has always been the boss’s “pet.” She wouldn’t dream of demoting someone as wonderful as him.
Gillian Martin will continue in her role as Head of Editorial.
Of course she will. Gillian has always been brilliant at pro-moting her own selfish interests. A political animal through and through, she’s a whiz at bullying subordinates, quick to point out their tiniest, most insignificant errors while withholding praise for outstanding work. Unless, of course, the subordinate’s name happens to be Derek Witowsky, in which case the rules are entirely different. Obviously, Gillian—who had considerable input into the decisions behind this email, collaborating with the other managers in an endless string of meetings behind closed doors—cast the three unlucky editors working for her aside to protect her own job and the career of her precious mentee. And it’s obvious that Gillian didn’t think my own career was worth protecting.
All employees are invited to an Information Session in the boardroom at 10:00 a.m. today. We will explain our new corporate strategy and answer your questions. Coffee and donuts will be served.
Coffee and donuts? Big deal. I glance at my watch. It’s almost 10:00 now. Around me, dozens of employees, their faces full of worry and fear, their loud voices blending into dozens of conver- sations, are spilling into the hallway, anxiously awaiting their fate in the boardroom. Screw it. I’m not going.
Sighing, I turn back to the computer screen, glowing coldly and harshly at me, and start to close the CEO’s email. Then a string of words—somehow I missed them—leaps out at me from the first paragraph:
Quill Pen Press will be transitioning to meet the more challenging marketplace of the 21st century.
Translation: The company is making these drastic changes because it’s losing a lot of money in this economy, a horrible economy full of unemployed people struggling to stay afloat. And unemployed people who are struggling can’t afford the luxury of snapping up the latest novels, biographies, how-to books, or anything else this company publishes.
I pause, my hand still clutching the mouse, take a deep breath, and try to calm down. I still have a job. And I’m taking this way too personally. What’s happening to me is also happening to some of my coworkers. It’s all about money: the worldwide economy is in the toilet, and the company is trying to stay afloat. It has to lay off staff and reassign the work to the remaining employees just to survive.
I loosen my grip on the mouse and look away from the comput- er screen, trying to blink the blurriness out of my eyes. By now, the office has emptied out, save for a few stragglers. I should join them, rush down to the info session.
But I don’t. I can’t. I have to find out what’s really going on. I have to speak to Gillian. Now.
I head down the hall toward Gillian’s office, knowing that she rarely bothers to show up at these boring info things, so there’s a very good chance I’ll find her there.
Her office door is closed, thank God. But my heart starts to pound.
I just have to calm down. And there’s no reason to be scared. The volume of short stories I edited a few months ago is selling well; it’s even earned several five-star reviews on Amazon. Gillian seems to be happy with my work; not long ago, she gave me a glowing performance review. Okay, she did keep Derek in a cushy job, but maybe that’s just common, subconscious, garden-variety sexism on her part.
My heart stops pounding. I knock softly on the door.
Snowflakes in a Blizzard 