The War on Sarah Morris

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.

WHERE TO BUY IT: Amazon, Barnes & Noble

PRICE: $17.99 (trade paperback), $5.99 (ebook)

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: 

Kathleen Jones

Email: joneslepidas@bell.net

Author site: https://kathleenjones.org/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/joneslepidas

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kathleen.lepidas

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleen-jones-lepidas-csc/

Weak in Comparison to Dreams

THE BOOK: Weak in Comparison to Dreams

PUBLISHED IN: 2023

THE AUTHOR: James Elkins

THE PUBLISHER: Unnamed Press

SUMMARY: Samuel is a civil servant in Guelph, Ontario. The city is planning to build a zoo, and he is sent to zoos in different countries to study animal welfare. He is besieged by the sufferings of zoo animals. 

Each night he dreams of walking through an endless mountainous landscape. There are forest fires in the distance, and they get closer each night.

He knows that the fires mean something is happening to him in real life, but he can’t understand what. In the zoos he behaves more and more erratically, lying and provoking his hosts. His assistant, a person of indeterminate gender named Viperine, sees that he is suffering and tries to help, but word of Samuel’s misbehavior reaches his supervisor, and he is fired. In his dreams, the fires come up on all sides.

There are photographs of forest fires and zoos in the book—things Samuel sees and imagines.

The book has a shorter second part. It tells the story of Samuel in extreme old age. He has found the book—the one we’re reading, which he’d written as a middle-aged man—and he is reading it again for the first time in forty years. He hardly remembers anything of the year recounted in the book. Instead the stories and characters come through to him as music. The elderly Samuel lives alone, and plays the piano. The stories in the book, the ones we’ve read, remind him of composers he plays, and he writes about their music. This part of the book has actual sheet music. Samuel’s stories about the music form a parallel narrative, retelling the book as music. When the book ends Samuel is at peace, because all that is left of his memories are melodies. 

THE BACK STORY: I’m an academic by profession, an art historian. About twenty years ago I started to feel unhappy about how writing is taught in the humanities. (Basically, all that counts is clarity and organization, and all the amazing and complex properties of writing are ignored or not encouraged.) It took me neary 20 years to write this book, which has nothing at all from my profession in it: no fine art, nothing academic.

WHY THIS TITLE: The main character, Samuel, is plagued by dreams. Every other chapter in the book is a dream, illustrated with photographs. Each night Samuel dreams of fires. Each night they get closer. Each day he forgets what he’s dreamed.

WHY SOMEONE WOULD WANT TO READ IT: For a picture of a life ruined by day and by night. For photographs, diagrams, and music in a novel. For the stories of animals in the zoos Samuel visits.

REVIEW COMMENTS: See this one in the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/01/05/weak-comparison-dreams-james-elkins-review/ Or this one: https://sebald.wordpress.com/2023/12/06/james-elkins-ambitious-new-novel/

AUTHOR PROFILE: James Elkins grew up in Ithaca, New York, separated from Cornell University by a quarter-mile of woods once owned by the naturalist Laurence Palmer.

He stayed on in Ithaca long enough to get the BA degree (in English and Art History), with summer hitchhiking trips to Alaska, Mexico, Guatemala, the Caribbean, and Columbia. For the last twenty-five years he has lived in Chicago; he got an MFA in painting, and then switched to art history, got another graduate degree, and went on to do the PhD in Art History, which he finished in 1989. (All from the University of Chicago.) Since then he has been teaching in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

He married Margaret MacNamidhe in 1994 at Eochaill on Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands, off the West coast of Ireland. Margaret is also an art historian, with specialties in Delacroix and Picasso.

Jim’s interests include microscopy (with a Zeiss Nomarski differential interference microscope and Anoptral phase contrast), stereo photography (with a Realist camera), playing piano (contemporary “classical” music), and (whenever possible) winter ocean diving.

His writing focuses on the history and theory of images in art, science, and nature. Some of his books are exclusively on fine art (What Painting Is, Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?). Others include scientific and non-art images, writing systems, and archaeology (The Domain of Images, On Pictures and the Words That Fail Them), and some are about natural history (How to Use Your Eyes). Recent books include What Photography Is, written against Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida; Artists with PhDs, second edition;and Art Critiques: A Guide, third edition.

AUTHOR COMMENTS: This book has lots of additional information—lists of characters, timelines, maps, notes and themes—online, here: https://jameselkins.com/writing-schedule/

SAMPLE CHAPTER: (Provide link). https://www.academia.edu/104862551/Weak_in_Comparison_to_Dreams_abstract_cover_sample_

LOCAL OUTLETS: Mad Street Books, Chicago.

WHERE ELSE TO BUY IT: It’s on Amazon.

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: jelkins@saic.edu

The Present Is Past

THE BOOK: The Present Is Past

PUBLISHED IN: 2023

THE AUTHOR: Josh Rank

THE EDITOR: Kristen Marckmann

THE PUBLISHER: Unsolicited Press

SUMMARY: Sam and Ashley Weber need to accept that their parents will die one day. And if their mom’s dementia or dad’s heart attack are any indication, that day might come sooner than they think.

Greg and Mary—the parents—are forced to confront their degrading health issues after it costs them both their jobs. Mary finds herself drawn to a specific place. And as strangers inexplicably tell her, she just needs to figure out where that is.

Sam and Ashley must set aside their problems if they want to find a way to help their mother create one last salient memory while it’s still possible. Greg and Mary watch their meager savings dwindle while she tries to figure out what this strange compulsion actually means.

The Webers can no longer ignore their collectively-avoided internal issues while the sun burns out, flocks of birds fall dead from the sky, and buildings full of people disappear in an instant.

THE BACK STORY: I wrote this book as a means of dealing with my own mother’s descent into Alzheimer’s. I once heard that you should write about the thing that scares you the most, and I put this off for years. The story is a fictionalized account of my family’s experience.

WHY THIS TITLE?: The difference between past, present, and future disintegrates to a person struggling with this disease. In a sense, they all become the same to the person while everyone else struggles to keep everything straight.

WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? Grief is best explored instead of avoided. That is the core of this book. Each member of the family goes through the process in their unique way. Hopefully the reader can get a semblance of the closure I was able to achieve through writing the book.

AUTHOR PROFILE: I grew up in Wisconsin but left immediately after graduating college. I moved around the country for the next 15 years before moving back to my hometown. In that time, I wrote a handful of books but The Present Is Past is the first to be published. My wife and I live with our dachshund Wilson, who’s named after a volleyball. Our house came with a pre-existing workshop so I’m trying to figure out how to make woodworking projects that don’t immediately fall apart when I’m not writing.

AUTHOR COMMENTS: Writing is a solitary practice. Toiling away for a decade or so in total obscurity makes the process of discussing your work in public very strange when a book is finally published. This book is very close to my heart, for obvious reasons. I wrote it in a magical realist style to keep the reader guessing as to what is actually happening and what is hallucinated, much like the experience of someone with Alzheimer’s. My goal for this book was to write an uplifting book about something completely depressing. This is a difficult subject. It doesn’t sound fun to read about. But I tried to construct a story that doesn’t shy away from the depressing reality of the situation while offering a glimmer of hope at the end..

SAMPLE: An extensive sample is available on the book’s Amazon page.

WHERE TO BUY IT: The book is available online at all major retailers, including Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and directly from the publisher.

PRICE: $18.95

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: Visit my website at http://www.joshrank.com, find me on Twitter, or email me directly at joshrank@yahoo.com. I’d love to hear from you.

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UPCOMING ON SNOWFLAKES IN A BLIZZARD, APRIL 23-29

“WEAK IN COMPARISON TO DREAMS,” BY JAMES ELKINS.

Writes one reviewer: “Weak in Comparison to Dreams is a novel that will haunt its readers even as it enchants. An astonishing book; mesmerizing, dreamlike, phantastic, grimly real. James Elkins has written a book of shimmering depth. His remarkable, expansive, and materializing imagination at once produces a toppling sense of vertigo and a deep pleasure that so many connections, carelessly unseen, exist all around us. Never before have I felt such empathy for a diagram, nor could I have anticipated such fascination with the compelling descriptions (and depictions) of musical compositions about pain and suffering.”

“THE WAR ON SARAH MORRIS,” BY KATHEEN JONES

Kathleen writes: “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.”

“THE PRESENT IS PAST,” BY JOSH RANK

Sam and Ashley Weber need to accept that their parents will die one day. And if their mom’s dementia or dad’s heart attack are any indication, that day might come sooner than they think.

Greg and Mary—the parents—are forced to confront their degrading health issues after it costs them both their jobs. Mary finds herself drawn to a specific place. And as strangers inexplicably tell her, she just needs to figure out where that is.

Sam and Ashley must set aside their problems if they want to find a way to help their mother create one last salient memory while it’s still possible. Greg and Mary watch their meager savings dwindle while she tries to figure out what this strange compulsion actually means.

Casualties

This week’s other featured book, “Seasons of a Psychotherapist’s Soul,” by Roger Marum, can be found by scrolling down below this post, or by clicking the authors name on our Authors page (Roger Marum 2).

THE BOOK: Casualties

PUBLISHED IN: 2023

THE AUTHOR: Joyce Becker Lee

THE EDITOR: Tateonna Payne

THE PUBLISHER: Tortoise Books

SUMMARY: A collection of short stories

THE BACK STORY: My aunt was the only Jewish teen in a small rural high school during World War II. I grew up in the same town, and went to the same school, and listened to her stories, reflecting on our similarities and differences. This gave birth to the title story, “Casualties.” The other stories have been written through the years, and in rereading them, I realized I write about the human depths—our passions, our fears, our disappointments. The title relates to all of my stories, and to all of us—we are all casualties in our lives, surviving our personal traumas and triumphs as best we can.

WHY THIS TITLE: “Casualties” is the title of the first story in the book, which deals with prejudice and friendship during World War II. My logline summarizes it: “Not all the war’s battles were fought overseas.”

WHY SOMEONE WOULD WANT TO READ IT: A teenage girl victimized by assault and prejudice. An office worker holding on to his boss’s cat after a failed workplace romance. A father struggling through a ceremony for a son lost in combat. A family whose members can often predict the day they’re going to die.

The characters in Casualties are damaged souls doing their best to keep moving despite their difficulties—a motley mélange of memorable misfits who refuse to be victims despite their circumstances. It’s a fantastic collection for young and old alike, a wonderful work about the walking wounded who somehow find a way to be kind despite life’s cruelties.

REVIEW COMMENTS: “Whether you’re a young reader searching for a way forward or an older reader reckoning with a past self who won’t leave you alone, you’re likely to find unexpected insights in Joyce Becker Lee’s emotionally complex and superbly crafted collection.” – Miles Harvey, bestselling author, The Island of Lost Maps and The King of Confidence

“We are all casualties in conflicts of some kind, we realize from reading these fine stories…Lee gracefully makes it brutally clear how her characters are subject to the power of large events and institutions, reminding us that our lives are subject in the same way. These stories are compelling.” – S.L. Wisenberg, author, The Adventures of Cancer Bitch, and The Wandering Womb

“Casualties takes readers from small-town Wisconsin to broad-shouldered Chicago, from happy homes to families stricken by addiction and abandonment, from bad breakups to bad bosses, and from musings on memory to meditations on the fabric of faith. Lee treats the facts of life with reverence and humor [and] acknowledges both the light and the darkness of the world in a way that leaves the reader feeling awake to the wonders and braced for impact.” – Jennifer Companik, author, Check Engine and Other Stories

“I never wanted the stories to end. I just wanted more!” -Barbara Frost, retired business manager

AUTHOR PROFILE: Joyce Becker Lee received her MFA from Northwestern University, where she was nominated for The Best New American Voices. Publishing credits include The First Line, Cicada, MemoryHouse, Prairies North, Folklore, Escape Into Life, Jerry Jazz Musician, Discretionary Love, and Chicken Soup for the Soul, among others. A lifelong theater enthusiast and educator, she has directed and performed in educational, community and professional theater and opera, and is the author/composer of seven children’s musicals. She lives and writes in the Chicago suburbs and spends her spare time chasing grandchildren. Her website is at jbleewriter.com.

AUTHOR COMMENTS: Words are my joy—I love nothing so much as editing, rewriting, and polishing sentences and thoughts. Writing is something I have simply always had to do, from my first novel at age 9 to every job I have had: teacher, newspaper reporter and editor, theater columnist, textbook developer/editor, web copywriter, and commercial ad writer. I love exploring the human experience, mining the hearts of my characters and making them real and whole.

SAMPLE CHAPTER:

“The Mikvah” can be read online at Escape into Life.com https://www.escapeintolife.com/fiction/the-mikvah-by-joyce-lee/

LOCAL OUTLETS: Barnes & Noble, Barbara’s Bookstore

WHERE ELSE TO BUY IT: Amazon, Target Online, Walmart Online

PRICE: $17.99

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: jbleewriter@gmail.com

Seasons of a Psychotherapist’s Soul

THE BOOK: Seasons of a Psycototherapist’s Soul

PUBLISHED IN: 2024

THE AUTHOR:  Roger Marum

THE EDITOR: Herta B. Feely of Chrysalis Editorial

THE PUBLISHER: Nico 11 Publishing & Design

SUMMARY: This is the story of a fictional psychotherapist, “Dr. Bob,” whose approaching retirement leads him to reflect on his years of practice and the people with whom he had the privilege of working.

THE BACK STORY: The book was written during a two year period when I became aware that my professional life would end, one day. I wanted to capture the intimate explorations, at times comedic as well as sad, that occur for both clients and therapist.

WHY THIS TITLE?: Self evident.

WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? Anyone who’s considered engaging a psychotherapist, been in therapy, or is a practitioner could find something interesting in Dr. Bob’s story.

REVIEW COMMENTS: “Roger Marum’s” stories wrestle with real-life issues and situations with which we [the readers] can identify.” Dr. Alan Forsman

AUTHOR PROFILE: Roger Marum is a psychotherapist, with a PhD from Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of Psychology, a truth and spiritual seeker, jazz-lover, and lifelong Chicago Cubs fan—all his soul’s passion. He lives in Vermont.
 
AUTHOR COMMENTS: In times of uncertainty the intimate relationship between client and therapist can provide grounding in addition to solace and companionship on the journey that we all share.

SAMPLE: See the Amazon page.

WHERE TO BUY IT: Amazon, Nico 11 Publishing & Design.

PRICE: $19.99

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: Roger Marum’s website: www.yourreluctantdisciple.com or contact on Facebook.

Weather Report, April 15

Illustration by Veniamin Kraskov.

UPCOMING ON SNOWFLAKES IN A BLIZZARD, APRIL 16-22,

“SEASONS OF A PSYCHOTHERAPIST’S SOUL,” BY ROGER MARUM.

This is the story of a fictional psychotherapist, “Dr. Bob,” whose approaching retirement leads him to reflect on his years of practice and the people with whom he had the privilege of working.

Notes Roger: “The book was written during a two-year period when I became aware that my professional life would end, one day. I wanted to capture the intimate explorations, at times comedic as well as sad, that occur for both clients and therapist.”

“CASUALTIES,” BY JOYCE BRADFORD LEE.

My aunt was the only Jewish teen in a small rural high school during World War II. I grew up in the same town, and went to the same school, and listened to her stories, reflecting on our similarities and differences. This gave birth to the title story, “Casualties.” The other stories have been written through the years, and in rereading them, I realized I write about the human depths—our passions, our fears, our disappointments. The title relates to all of my stories, and to all of us—we are all casualties in our lives, surviving our personal traumas and triumphs as best we can.

Tandem

This week’s other featured books, “The Good Deed,” by Helen Benedict and “From the Longing Orchard,” by Jessica Jopp, can be found by scrolling down below this post, or by clicking the author’s name on our Authors page (use Helen Benedict (2).

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THE BOOK: Tandem

PUBLISHED IN: 2023

THE AUTHOR: Andy Mozina.

THE EDITOR: Gerald Brennan.

THE PUBLISHER: Tortoise Books, Chicago. “Tortoise Books focuses on quality, not quantity. Or more accurately, we know quality will bring quantity down the road, in the slow and steady race to win discerning readers.”

SUMMARY (based on the jacket copy): Mike Kovacs is an economics professor who’s trying to get over a bitter divorce. He’s barely on speaking terms with his only child. And he’s just killed two bicyclists in an inebriated hit-and-run at a deserted Michigan beach. (In his defense, he hadn’t meant to get that drunk. And what’s the use of getting caught and going to jail if it means you can no longer make positive contributions to society?)

Claire Boland’s daughter is one of the victims. She’s racked with guilt over what she might have done differently as a parent. Her marriage is buckling under the weight of the tragedy. And yet there’s one person who seems to understand the magnitude of her grief—her neighbor, Mike Kovacs.

Tandem is a gripping dark satire about two lives that intersect in the most awful way possible. The novel details the absurd lengths we go to in order to avoid uncomfortable truths. It’s a mesmerizing book about the weight of guilt and the longing for justice—and the crazy things we do for love.

THE BACK STORY: Within the span of a few weeks, I accidentally ran a red light, stopping only inches from t-boning another car, and then heard a story about drunk driving crashes on NPR. I wasn’t drunk when I ran that red light, but I was wildly distracted by my own thoughts and an unfamiliar driving situation, and I was stunned by how quickly a life could change for both victim and perpetrator. My mother had a way of trying to scare us out of doing dangerous things that she eventually boiled down into the ominous phrase “In one second…” This novel is a way of finishing her sentence. From the first note-taking to pub day took almost eight years.

WHY THIS TITLE?: I’m glad you’re curious! There’s a double meaning in the title, but it would take a spoiler to explain…

WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? If you love an intense, suspenseful read that is darkly funny at times.

REVIEW COMMENTS:

“One of the 15 Must-Read Small Press Books of Fall 2023“ — Electric Literature.

“Reading Tandem is an education in crime, punishment, and the dark side of human compassion—and somehow it also manages to be hilarious. Mozina’s signature hapless characters, through their own foolish decisions, can only manage to make difficult circumstances worse as they move from guilt to grief to absurdity. A psychological tour de force!” —Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of The Waters “

“A delicate web of intrigue. Fans of Kimberly Belle, Alex Kiester, and Greg Olear will appreciate Mozina’s ability to blend the drama of a domestic thriller with the heartbreak of loss in many forms: death, divorce, and distance.” — Booklist “Editor’s Choice“ —New Pages/

AUTHOR PROFILE: A wayward economics major, a law school drop-out, a failed Second City student overwhelmed by the amount of miming required to practice improv, I found my way to writing fiction because mistakes could always be edited. I’ve published two story collections, including The Women Were Leaving the Men, which won the Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award, and two novels. My fiction has appeared in Tin House, The Southern Review, McSweeney’s, Ecotone and elsewhere. My stories have received honorable mentions in Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize, and New Stories from the Midwest. My wife and I live in Kalamazoo, where I teach creative writing at Kalamazoo College. Our daughter is going to graduate law school any day now.

AUTHOR COMMENTS: As I was drafting the novel in 2016, events in certain quarters of our political world made me just a little obsessed with accountability and frustrated by our maddening capacity for rationalizing bad behavior. But I didn’t want a simple morality tale. Instead, I wanted to intertwine and complicate the roles of perpetrator and victim as much as I could. SAMPLE:

SAMPLE.

The sun was setting when Mike Kovacs pulled out of the parking lot of the Arcadia Brew Pub and entered what seemed like a reasonable gap in westbound traffic on Kalamazoo Avenue. A horn meeped. Was it in front of him or behind him or coming from inside his head? He’d had one Double IPA too many. There was something like 10% alcohol in those beers.

Dinner with Dave and Sarah had been great. The mid-May evening was warm enough to sit on the pub’s patio overlooking the swift and glittering Kalamazoo River. Fluffy dandelion seeds blew overhead, passing in and out of bands of horizontal sunlight. A folk guitarist sang incomprehensible lyrics through portable speakers with just the right feeling. Mike had feasted on smoked beef brisket, baked beans, and jalapeño corn bread. Bearded Dave told stories with fingers splayed; angular Sarah made clipped, sardonic comments. They’d had some big laughs.

Cutting through the mid-rise edge of downtown, the street became one-way and picked up a third lane. Another horn sounded. Mike seemed to have drifted from his lane, or maybe he had not definitively chosen a lane. He would do so now.

“I accept that you had to meep your horn,” he said aloud, darting his eyes into his rearview. A red Jeep veered out of the mirror, reappeared much larger on his left, and roared past him. “My bad.”

He had become extremely happy during dinner, but when the patio filled like a swimming pool with shadow, Sarah had said, “Well, some of us have to work tomorrow,” and grabbed her handbag from the weathered picnic table.

“Mike’s still got his beer,” Dave observed.

True: he had about half of a golden twenty-ouncer in front of him. Serving sizes were trending larger across multiple beverage types. What did that say about supply? What did that say about demand? Mike foresaw a not-too-distant future when a standard beer would be forty-eight ounces, cost $30, and come in a Freon-lined tankard. He wondered if there was a way to get that vision on the record somewhere.

“No, I totally respect that,” Mike said to Sarah with an ingratiating smile. It was a Thursday night, after all, and though Dave and Mike didn’t have to teach tomorrow, Sarah had to report for duty in her lab at Zoetis. Mike was tempted to leave his third beer, but he hated to waste resources, and it would be funny to chug the rest—just like one of his degenerate students.

“Mike, Mike, Mike!” Dave chanted while he guzzled, and even Sarah grinned when he’d slammed his empty glass down, eyes watering, and shook his head like a wet dog.

The whole evening had been so spontaneous. Mike had learned that his latest article—“Three’s a Crowd?: Financial Stability and the Federal Reserve’s Dual Mandate”—had finally been accepted at the Journal of Economics and Business, a very good venue. Promotion to full professor was at last within reach. He’d texted the news to Dave, who called for a celebratory dinner that very evening because he and Sarah would be at a wedding in Chicago over the weekend.

Hanging out with Sarah and Dave gave Mike hope that things were finally getting back to normal after his divorce. They were the first couple he and Anne had really bonded with when they’d moved to Kalamazoo. Mike and Dave met at the college and brought them all together. Anne sold real estate and could be loud and silly. Sarah developed animal vaccines and was more wry and reserved. Yet after taking Zumba classes together, Sarah and Anne had become friends on their own terms, and during the unraveling of his marriage, Mike had never been quite sure where Sarah’s loyalties lay. He couldn’t stand being the bad guy. Anne’s hasty and unceremonious move to Tucson four months ago had shifted things with Sarah. When it had come up tonight, Mike had predicted producers of margarita mix would notice a steep sales drop in Michigan and a corresponding rise in Arizona, and Sarah had allowed herself a laugh. This sign of sympathy created an enormous sense of reprieve, as when a firing squad unexpectedly stands down.

Two sets of lights at intersections up ahead turned green at almost the same instant. They were so beautiful! All at once the license plate on the SUV in front of him grew large and clear like a line on an eye chart brought into sudden focus. He flopped his foot onto the brake, braced for impact—the SUV had just begun to accelerate, moving inches away as he came to a skidding stop. He had seen the light change from a distance and assumed the way was clear.

“Wow,” he said to himself. “Wow. Wow. Wow.”

Mike regripped the wheel at ten and two, established a safer following distance, and leaned forward slightly as if it would improve his vision.

The irony was that after years of holding back because Anne was sliding into alcoholism, Mike was very drunk. He had evidently forgotten how to manage more than one beer. Things had been so shitty for years, but now they were looking up. At this precise moment, they were fantastic. He was almost used to being alone in the old cedar-shingled house. His son Connor, a rising junior at the University of Michigan, wouldn’t be coming home for the summer. This was consistent with Connor saying that Mike and Anne had “fucked up” and were “a shit example” for him. (Connor, like his mother, had a knack for saying blunt and devastating things when stressed.) But the real reason was Connor’s excellent marketing internship with Google in Ann Arbor. Connor would be fine, and using his parents’ catastrophic marriage as a negative example wouldn’t be the worst thing.

In any case, Mike didn’t want this glorious night to end. He was tired of Netflixing Breaking Bad back at the house. Maybe he could meet someone, or even get laid. Anne’s departure had thrown him badly, but why not get back on the horse this very night? He was a single man—fifty years old, yes, but a good fifty, a young fifty, an in-pretty-good-shape fifty.

Mike believed there was no reason to decline physically at his age. For god’s sake, a fifty-seven-year-old ex-Marine had recently set the world record for continuous abdominal planking—five hours, fifteen minutes, and fifteen seconds. Mike could plank for four minutes. This meant he had the potential to increase his plank time approximately 7800 percent over the next seven years. He couldn’t be over a hill he had only just begun to climb.

He approached the weird intersection where Kalamazoo Avenue split—two lanes curving left and up West Main Hill toward his house, and one lane curving right to merge with Douglas Avenue. At the last second, he made a no-look lane change and swooped onto Douglas.

The night wasn’t ending.

WHERE TO BUY IT: In Kalamazoo, at https://www.bookbugkalamazoo.com/bookstore; https://kazoobooks.com; and http://www.michigannewsagency.net. Also available from Bookshop, Tortoise Books, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.

PRICE: print $18.99; e-book $8.49; audiobook $varies

CONTACT THE AUTHOR:

Email: Andrew.Mozina@kzoo.edu

Website: http://www.andymozina.com

The Good Deed

THE BOOK: The Good Deed

PUBLISHED IN: 2024

THE AUTHOR: Helen Benedict 

THE EDITOR: Kate Gale

THE PUBLISHER: Red Hen Press, Pasadena, CA. Independent press that’s been around since 1994.

SUMMARY: Set in 2018 against the backdrop of an overcrowded, fetid refugee camp on the beautiful Greek island of Samos, The Good Deed follows the stories of four women living in the camp and an American tourist who comes to Samos to escape her own dark secret. When the tourist does a “good deed,” she triggers a crisis that brings her and the refugee women into a conflict that escalates dramatically as each character struggles for what she needs.

One of my favorite descriptions of the novel comes from Iranian author Dalia Sofer, who wrote the brilliant, Man of My Time. “A  poignant, layered novel on displacement and belonging, love and betrayal, and the jagged space between altruism and egoism.”

 THE BACK STORY: I decided to write The Good Deed in 2018, when I spent five weeks with refugees on the island of Samos, in Greece. I was so horrified by the conditions they lived amidst in this otherwise beautiful place — their camp was like a slum inside a prison —  and yet so moved by the resilience and kindness of the people I met, that I felt compelled to write articles and a nonfiction book exposing their plight, and a novel doing the same in aneven deeper way.

WHY THIS TITLE?: The story basically turns the white savior trope inside-out, so the title is ironic but also literal.

WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? Because it’s a story about people’s courge in the face of hardship, a story about friendship, about love, and about lives very far from the experiences of many readers — lives we all need to understand better. But also because it’s sweeping, dramatic and sometimes funny book!

REVIEW COMMENTS: 

Kirkus Reviews: “The novel reminds us that hope is still to be found in the most desolate of places… prompting the reader to consider why and how we ask a person to prove their own humanity. An insightful reminder of our responsibilities to one another, more important now than ever.”

Publishers Weekly:”Benedict revisits the terrain of her nonfiction title Map of Hope and Sorrow for a complex and heartbreaking story of Syrians living at a refugee camp on the Greek island of Samos…Each of the characters’ perspectives is nuanced and carefully wrought. Benedict has crafted an involving tale of a humanitarian crisis.” 

Booklist: “Benedict’s haunting, timely novel traces the intense journeys of female refugees as their paths collide with a vacationing tourist… (This) true-to-life novel resonates, particularly in the characters’ moments of fortitude in the face of brutal experiences of heartbreak and loss.” 

AUTHOR PROFILE: Helen Benedict, a professor at Columbia University, is the author of seven previous novels, six books of nonfiction, and a play. Her newest novel,  The Good Deed,comes out of the research she conducted for her 2022 nonfiction book, Map of Hope and Sorrow, which earned PEN’s Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History in 2021. Benedict’s previous novel, Wolf Season received a starred review in Library Journal, which wrote, “In a book that deserves the widest attention, Benedict ‘follows the war home,’ engaging readers with an insightful story right up until the gut-wrenching conclusion.” Benedict’s 2011 novel,  Sand Queen , was named a “Best Contemporary War Novel” by Publishers Weekly. A recipient of the Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism, and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, she is also the author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq. Her books have been translated into seven languages.

 AUTHOR COMMENTS: “As the novel comes out of my research and reporting about refugees, who personify one of the most pressing issues of our day, I hope it will help to push against the demonization of immigrants that is growing ever more common around the world and in the United States. We have to find compassionate ways to help refugees because, between the climate and today’s wars, the need will grow ever more urgent.”

SAMPLE:

Not again. Please.

A splash dives into my snorkel tube, so I raise my head to empty it out and take in where I am. Far—a great deal farther than I thought. The little rowboat has shrunk to the size of a bath toy. I’m not tired but I am sensible. Time to turn back.

Just as I do, my eye catches a spot of color, an orange object bobbing a short distance away . . . a buoy perhaps, or else a polluting plastic bag I ought to remove. I swim closer.

It is not a buoy. Or a bag. It’s a life jacket. With somebody in it. A pitifully small somebody.

A fist closes around me, pulling me to a halt. I tread water, my breath suddenly short and airless.

Not again. Please.

The little figure is ominously still—no sign of swimming or flailing. No movement at all.

The fist grips tighter.

Not this time, Hilma. You can’t.

With a shudder, I wrench free of my paralysis and push myself closer. Then again, the fist.

WHERE TO BUY IT: Your local store, https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-good-deed-helen-benedict/20210110?ean=9781636281124, https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-good-deed-helen-benedict/1143709605?ean=9781636281124, Amazon or anywhere else.

PRICE: $18.95

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: https://www.facebook.com/helen.benedict.5

From the Longing Orchard

THE BOOK: From the Longing Orchard

PUBLISHED IN: 2023

THE AUTHOR: Jessica Jopp

THE EDITOR: Shelby Wallace, part of the amazing staff at Red Hen Press

THE PUBLISHER: Red Hen Press

SUMMARY: Eighteen-year-old Sonya Hudson has been gripped by phobia since she was thirteen. What would make navigating the world so difficult for this budding visual artist? When the story opens, she lives with her mother and her sister in a suburb in New York in the late 1970s. The narrative carries us back through her childhood, where she struggles with the family’s frequent moving and with her parents’ increasingly fraught marriage. Lingering at the periphery of her consciousness is the shadow of a damaged boy she knew when she was very young. Reverence for the natural world provides comfort, as does her fierce attachment to her sister and her parents’ poignant guidance. But it is the intimacy with another young woman that ultimately offers a path to healing. In language soaring with poetic incantation, From the Longing Orchard shows us the ways in which a young woman and those she loves all must contend with a longing of some kind and how they seek from each other, and sometimes find, the needed balm.

THE BACK STORY: I worked on this novel for many years. I was fortunate to have two stays at the New York State Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore, where I worked with Tony Eprile and, several years later, Claire Messud. Tony helped tremendously with the structure of the whole, and Claire gave indispensable advice about narrative details. This guidance, along with my experience as a poet, shaped the book’s broad strokes and its texture.

WHY THIS TITLE: The title is both a metaphor and a reference to a literal orchard that appears later in the novel. Several of the characters are driven by a longing or by an effort to navigate a hardship of some kind, and they do so in a shared familial landscape. I also wanted a metaphor-as-title to suggest the poetic attributes of the book, including figurative language and imagery.

WHY SOMEONE WOULD WANT TO READ IT: This novel is a coming-of-age story that I hope would speak to many audiences. It is about a young adult trying to find her way in the world; about how seeing the world as an artist provides solace; about the ways in which family members offer comfort, even in difficult times. The novel celebrates immersion in the natural world, as both inspiration for art and as nourishment. I would also hope the novel gives a reader a chance to slow down, that it invites introspection, as well as a chance to revel in language.

REVIEW COMMENTS:

“Filled with beautiful descriptions of nature and told through the sensibility of a deeply sensitive and observant young girl growing into adulthood and her own queer sexuality, this novel has a quiet but powerful impact that will live on in the reader’s memory.” —Tony Eprile, author of The Persistence of Memory, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year

“In this novel, words take on the weight of objects, shimmer in images that linger long after the pages are turned. Jopp, a gifted poet, is also a natural storyteller, and she has created a world I want to return to again and again. Breathtaking at the level of language with characters both complicated and alive on the page, From the Longing Orchard will enchant you while it breaks your heart—a perfect reading experience if you ask me. I loved it.” —Anne Dyer Stuart, author of What Girls Learn

“This is a nuanced story of disintegration and renewal, like the seasons; it is a coming-of-age story, a textured love story in which all one’s senses are awakened. I first read Jessica Jopp well over twenty years ago. I loved her writing then, and after all these years, it still resonates.” —Jacqueline Dumas, author of The Heart Begins Here

“I loved this novel. It’s lyrical and tender and heartbreaking and hopeful. Whether she’s writing about Sonya’s phobia or yearnings, about fears or nature, Jopp’s prose is poetic and mesmerizing. She drew me wholeheartedly into these characters and their stories. Highly recommended.” —Ellen Meeropol, author of several novels, including The Lost Women of Azalea Court

AUTHOR PROFILE: Jessica Jopp grew up in New York State. She holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. From the Longing Orchard is her first novel. Also an award-winning poet, Jopp has published her work in numerous journals, among them POETRY, The Texas Observer, Seneca Review, and Denver Quarterly. Her poetry collection The History of a Voice was awarded the Baxter Hathaway Prize in Poetry from Epoch, and it was published in 2021 by Headmistress Press. Jopp teaches at Slippery Rock University. She lives in Indiana, Pennsylvania, where she is on the board of a non-profit working to protect a community woodland.

AUTHOR COMMENTS: From the Longing Orchard is the recipient of the Quill Prose Award, which is given annually by Red Hen to a book of prose by a queer author.

SAMPLE CHAPTER: https://www.littsburgh.com/start-reading-from-the-longing-orchard-by-jessica-jopp/

LOCAL OUTLETS: This can be ordered at any independent bookstore.

WHERE ELSE TO BUY IT: https://redhen.org/book/from-the-longing-orchard/

PRICE: $19.95

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: https://jessicajopp.org/