Drue Heinz Literature Prize winner
“I stopped telling that story, until now. Even when I finally tiptoed into writing about my first husband’s death, I couldn’t bring myself to write that ghost story because that purple splotch remained on the white nightgown for years, and I continued wearing the bathrobe and nothing else ever stained. Some stories shouldn’t be true yet are, and those are the stories our souls crave and fear.” (Salon)
Admit This To No One
Camelot forever belongs to someone else. He’s only a man standing on the outside, looking in. This is who he has been from the very beginning. Not that he understands this.
“Bristling with intelligence, political awareness, and psychological complexity.”
Silver Girl
Finally I had to ask, desperate to sound casual, “Why do you even talk to me?” but the sentence burbled out on a wave of neediness and stupidity and I crushed a pillow over my face. She laughed like I was hilarious, not dead-serious, and declared, “There are people who listen to the words and then people who listen.” I couldn’t admit not knowing which group I was supposed to want to be in, but I relished the warm relief of being sorted into the right one.
“A dark, intense novel on a hot subject: female friendship complicated by class and privilege.”
This Angel on My Chest
He joked that he would die young. You imagined ninety-nine to your hundred. But by “young” he meant sixty-five, fifty-five. What “young” ended up meaning was thirty-five….
“A stunning book, a rare tour de force.”
A Year and a Day
Mama came back three days after her funeral. That was my mother, as symbolic as they got. Three days, like she was Jesus Christ himself. “Alice,” she whispered as I was frying up pancakes, willing the bubbles to pop so I could flip them, “it’s Mama. I’m back.”…
“Wry, witty, suffused with longing as well as hope.”
Pears On a Willow Tree
We were at my great-grandmother’s house because she was surprised my mother had never learned how to make pierogi, Polish dumplings. “There’s no secret,” my great-grandmother said as she opened and closed kitchen cupboards, barely glancing at them to set her hands on exactly what she wanted. “Don’t all the time be looking first for shortcuts.” I loved how she talked, her thick words like blocks stacking into a story….
“A rich, intricate, heartfelt novel.”