Allison Alsup’s debut novel FOREIGN SEED combines beautiful, lyrical writing that transports us to another time and place with a propulsive plot that keeps us turning the page and reading long past our bedtime. The characters are tightly drawn and three-dimensional (even the secondary characters) and the unfolding action, setting descriptions, and dialogue are gripping. The author handles the fraught theme of "ambiguous loss" with grace and elegance. This book is so beautifully written and definitely has cinematic potential. At the beginning, I was getting Casablanca vibes and by the end, I was thinking about another favorite movie, The Year of Living Dangerously.
Set in China as
America gets involved in WWI, Foreign Seed follows newly minted Vice
Consul Samuel Sokobin's first case as he investigates the disappearance of
Frank Meyer (of Meyer Lemon fame), explorer for the U.S. Department of Foreign
Seed and Plant Introduction, when he disappears from a steamship on the Yangtze
River. A rugged, Dutch immigrant, Meyer made a living seeking foreign specimens
as a man without a country, a feeling Sokobin denies as he ticks off one more
year living in temporary housing in China and shielding himself from the
possibility of close friendship. Moreover, Meyer is rumored…
The endearing characters and evocative settings drew me in from the first page. We feel the angst of being torn between cultures, mourning for a time and place that can no longer exist, and the indelible power of first love. Shick pulls out all the stops, with her brilliant descriptions and artful plot lines that weave in and out of the decades, but it's not heavy-handed or ever too much. We also get a glimpse into a time and place few of us know anything about, which is one of the reasons I love historical fiction.
Winner of the AWP Prize for the Novel, The Golden Land digs deep into the complexities of family history and relationships. Etta Montgomery is a Boston-based labor lawyer coming to terms with the love and loss she experienced as a teenager during a 1988 family reunion in Burma. When Etta's grandmother dies, she is compelled to travel back to Myanmar (Burma) to explore the complicated adolescent memories of her grandmother's family and the violence she witnessed there. Full of rich detail and intricate relationships, The Golden Land seeks to uncover those personal…
Writing a play within a novel is a daunting task, but Kate Feiffer pulls it off with aplomb. The tangled story of Elise and the cast of colorful characters—real and imagined—in her life had me laughing out loud at times, teary-eyed at others. Feiffer’s prose is sparkling, the wordplay is clever but not too precious, and the situations her characters get themselves into are just this side of plausible. The novel features universal themes—family drama, aging parents, sullen teenagers, horrible dates, work pressures—wrapped in a madcap tale worthy of one of the old movies Elise’s foul-mouthed mother Trudy watches endlessly. Outside my usual reading genre, and I loved every rollicking minute of it.
When her professional and family life collide, a playwright starts journaling every morning to push through her writer's block in this laugh-out-loud and fresh take on family, friendship, and the chaos of midlife.
"[A] winning adult debut..." -Publishers Weekly
"A heartwarming, sometimes hilarious meditation on writer's block, expectations, and the push and pull of constantly shifting identities." -Martha's Vineyard Magazine
Elise Hellman was once heralded by audiences and critics as a "playwright to watch." Then they forgot all about her. When a prestigious theater company unexpectedly offers her a generous commission to write a new play, she has an opportunity…
Inspired by little-known historical events and set to a swing-era soundtrack, The Italian Prisoner is an engrossing story of wartime love, family secrets, and a young woman’s struggle to chart her own course at an inflection point in American history.
In 1943 New Orleans, Rose Marino lives with her Sicilian immigrant parents and helps in the family grocery store. Her older brother and sister both joined the Army, and Rose prays for their safety as World War II rages overseas. Her parents expect Rose to marry a local boy and start a family. But she secretly dreams of being more like her fiercely independent widowed godmother. Behind her parents’ backs, Rose lands a job at the shipyard, where she feels free and important for the first time in her life.
When the parish priest organizes a goodwill mission to visit Italian prisoners of war at a nearby military base, Rose and her vivacious best friend, Marie, join the group. There, Rose falls for Sal, a handsome and intelligent POW. Italy has switched sides in the war, so the POWs are allowed out to socialize, giving Rose and Sal a chance to grow closer. When Rose gets a promotion at work, she must make an agonizing choice: follow a traditional path like Marie or keep working after the war and live on her own terms.
