Today’s post by author Meg Donohue | @MegDonohue

We continue our summer profile series today with Meg Donohue, author of ALL THE SUMMER GIRLS. If you haven’t yet entered to win Meg’s novel, and the other five books we’re featuring this summer, you can do so here. And if you miss this chance? You’ll have two more. We’re giving a set of the books to one lucky winner every week during the month of June. You can read the other profiles we’ve done in this series here, here, and here.

Meg Donohue

The summer of 1996 was a pivotal one for me. I’d just graduated from high school, and planned to attend Dartmouth College in the fall. I’d been saving all year to rent a summer house in the beach town of Avalon, New Jersey with my best friends. To this day, I don’t know how we convinced our parents to sign off on this idea. I suppose they realized that in a few short months we’d be on our own anyway, heading off to colleges near and far. And it wouldn’t just be sunbathing and parties—we’d each secured a job on the seven-mile-long barrier island. We understood that if we were living on our own, we’d have to support ourselves. It all felt very mature and exciting—a hint of the adventurous, adult lives that we were sure awaited us on the other side of college.

The house that we rented turned out to be more of a shack. It was small and dingy, with no air conditioning, no dishwasher, and—most devastating to a group of eighteen-year-old girls—not a single closet. There were three cell-like bedrooms in a row, each just big enough to hold a bunk bed. We ended up hooking hangers together and hanging them on the walls because there was no space for a bureau. It felt sort of like camping, except in a beach town. You could smell the funk of low tide in every room. If you stood on the roof at sunset, which we often did, you could watch the bay turn pink. We rode our bikes everywhere and fell in love with brand new boys we hadn’t grown up with and sold lots of t-shirts to sunburned tourists and somehow thrived despite very little sleep.

The protagonists of All the Summer Girls also spend a pivotal summer in Avalon, New Jersey. The women are not based on my friends, or me, and the plot is not autobiographical—I have only happy memories from my time in Avalon, while the protagonists of the novel are haunted by a tragedy that occurred that summer. But the love that the protagonists feel for the island is as real as the love that I feel for that special place, and the house where they lived during that fateful summer is based on the one that I lived in with my best friends from childhood. Just as in the novel, that house was torn down to make way for one of the bigger, fancier homes that have changed the look of the island over recent decades. It lives on only in the golden-hued memories that my friends and I cherish—and now, too, in All the Summer Girls.

* * *

All the Summer Girls by Meg Donohue:

In Philadelphia, good girl Kate is dumped by her fiancé the day she learns she is pregnant with his child. In New York City, beautiful stay-at-home mom Vanessa finds herself obsessively searching the Internet for news of an old flame. And in San Francisco, Dani, the wild child and aspiring writer who can’t seem to put down a book—or a cocktail—long enough to open her laptop, has just been fired… again.

In an effort to regroup, Kate, Vanessa, and Dani retreat to the New Jersey beach town where they once spent their summers. Emboldened by the seductive cadences of the shore, the women begin to realize just how much their lives, and friendships, have been shaped by the choices they made one fateful night on the beach eight years earlier—and the secrets that only now threaten to surface.

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Today’s post by debut novelist, Amy Sue Nathan | @AmySueNathan

We’re thrilled to have Amy Sue Nathan with us today. Her debut novel, THE GLASS WIVES, is one of the six books we’ve chosen as our Summer Reads. And in case you missed the announcement on Wednesday, not only are we giving away all six novels this week, we’ll be giving them away once every week for the month of June. So go on, toss your name in the hat. We’ll draw a winner for this week’s round later today.

* * *

Amy Sue Nathan

Six and a half years ago I started writing a memoir. Then I stopped.  I realized—and was taught— I had to write the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  I learned that I couldn’t leave out parts or people; that the story was about more than me. I wasn’t willing to write about my children. I didn’t want to write about real people behaving badly, or even about the real people who behaved well.

And that’s when I became an aspiring novelist.

But, when the springboard for a novel is the truth, it’s often hard for readers who know the author to pick apart what might be true, what’s definitely true, and what’s totally not true. I always say that ninety-nine percent of The Glass Wives is a product of my imagination, but that they’ll have to use their imaginations to come up with the other one percent.

I’ve come to understand the curiosity—readers wondering if some of the wonderful and heinous things in the book really happened. The answer is yes. And no.  Nothing in the book is exactly as it was.  That’s what makes it fiction.  Well, except for one thing.

I did sit shiva for my ex-husband in a house with a Christmas tree.

The Glass Wives opens at shiva, the Jewish mourning ritual where people gather at a relative’s home for usually a period of seven days, to pray, console, and eat.  I’m Jewish and so was he. Sitting shiva was not a stretch. But, just like in The Glass Wives, my ex’s second wife was not Jewish.  And since he died in December just like the ex-husband in the book (although the circumstances were completely different), there was a Christmas tree.  Although I describe the Christmas tree in detail in the book, and am sure I never did anything except glance at the “real” tree from across the room. I have no idea what it really looked like or what ornaments hung from its branches.

I’ve never celebrated anything but Jewish holidays, yet I imagine sitting shiva in a house with a Christmas tree might be like sitting down to Easter dinner and being served not ham or turkey, but gefilte fish, matzo ball soup, and chopped liver.  These are cultural disparities from which you can’t hide. In real life and in The Glass Wives, this gap was a reminder that while everyone was there for the same reason, differences did abound, even when they didn’t matter.

But in The Glass Wives, these things must matter as they serve to introduce the novel’s main characters. The unusual setting puts Evie Glass, her friends, and her family, in the same place at the same time, yet each one experiencing something different that allows them to set off on separate journeys that bring them together at The End.

How is that not like real life?

In real life, I’m only somewhere in the middle.

* * *

Evie and Nicole Glass share a last name. They also shared a husband. When a tragic car accident ends the life of Richard Glass, it also upends the lives of Evie and Nicole, and their children. There’s no love lost between the widow and the ex. In fact, Evie sees a silver lining in all this heartache—the chance to rid herself of Nicole once and for all. But Evie wasn’t counting on her children’s bond with their baby half-brother, and she wasn’t counting on Nicole’s desperate need to hang on to the threads of family, no matter how frayed. Strapped for cash, Evie cautiously agrees to share living expenses—and her home—with Nicole and the baby. But when Evie suspects that Nicole is determined to rearrange more than her kitchen, Evie must decide who she can trust. More than that, she must ask: what makes a family?

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Today’s post by this month’s featured author, Christina Baker Kline | @BakerKline

Christina Baker Kline

As a writer I’ve always been interested in how people tell the stories of their lives and what these stories reveal, intentionally or not, about who they are.  I am intrigued by the spaces between words, the silences that conceal long-kept secrets, the complexities that lie beneath the surface.  And I am interested in the pervasive and insidious legacy of trauma: the way events beyond our control can shape and define our lives.  All of my novels address these themes.

Like my four previous novels, Orphan Train is about cultural identity and family history.  For the first time, however, I undertook a project that required a huge amount of historical, cultural, and geographical research.  This novel traces the journey of Vivian Day, a 91-year-old woman, from a small village in Ireland to the crowded streets of the Lower East Side to the wide-open expanses of the Midwest to the coast of Maine.  Her life spans nearly a century, encompassing great historical change and upheaval.

Orphan Train is a specifically American story of mobility and rootlessness, highlighting a little-known but historically significant moment in our country’s past.  Between 1854 and 1929, so-called “orphan trains” transported more than 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, and homeless children from the coastal cities of the eastern United States to the Midwest, where they were taken in and many were eventually adopted.  My own background is partly Irish, and so I decided that I wanted to write about an Irish girl who has kept silent about the circumstances that led her to the orphan train.  “People who cross the threshold between the known world and that place where the impossible does happen discover the problem of how to convey that experience,” Kathryn Harrison writes. Over the course of Orphan Train Vivian moves from shame about her past to acceptance, eventually coming to terms with what she’s been through.  In the process she learns about the regenerative power of claiming – and telling – one’s life story.

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Today’s post by debut author Suzanne Rindell 

We have a copy of Suzanne’s novel, THE OTHER TYPIST, up for grabs today. Just leave a comment on this post and you’ll be entered to win.

Suzanne Rindell

People seem to find it interesting that I worked at a literary agency while writing my first novel.  My fellow writers in particular seem surprised.  “Didn’t you have to read some pretty bad stuff sometimes?” they ask.  Or, an alternative version of the same thing: “Didn’t that interfere with your own creative process?”  And then, there is the question that actually weighed most heavily on my heart: “Do you find your passion was divided between your writing and other people’s projects?”

I thought about that last question a lot, and not just in retrospect, but also during the time I worked there.  Working in publishing is more or less a round-the-clock endeavor.  You need to be kind of obsessive in a way, because your job is to constantly think about what makes a good manuscript good, and what makes a book work – and by “work,” I mean appeal to a lot of readers.  These are necessary questions for an editor or an agent to constantly ask, and they are certainly not bad questions for a writer to ask herself, as they are questions concerned with connecting to one’s audience.

I was lucky; I worked at a well-reputed agency.  Our “slush pile” (i.e. unsolicited submissions) was of a higher caliber, and while working there I encountered a number of great manuscripts that way.  But one month, we had a particularly dry spell.  I came home from the agency one day, frustrated that I wasn’t finding my “dream manuscript” in the slush, and decided: I’ll write the manuscript I want to find myself!  That day, I decided to run with it and started the first chapter of my novel.

After that, I spent little tiny periods of time – usually very late at night or very early in the morning – adding a little more to my novel.  I found this daily act didn’t take away my passion for agency work – instead, it enhanced it!  I still wanted to find great manuscripts, and I felt the act of writing everyday helped hone my instinct for giving sharper editorial advice and spotting talent in others.  I was as obsessed with their projects as I was with my own.  The experience wasn’t competitive, either.  Instead, I felt a larger sense of community. I wanted (and still want) my fellow writers to succeed, and raise the bar for other writers.  In my opinion, writing is like real estate: you don’t want to be the nicest house on a crummy block.  You want to live in a dazzling neighborhood that inspires you to make bold renovations.

Realistically, I am forced to admit I don’t have the time to work full-time at an agency anymore.  Book tours and related obligations have shown me there are sometimes spells where I simply don’t have the hours to work for other writers as their primary agent in the manner they deserve.  Nonetheless, I still hope to find some sort of middle ground; some way to continue discovering, helping, and supporting my fellow authors within the publishing community.  Because if you ask me, writing while cheering on and mentoring other writers is truly a win-win situation.

For fans of The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Great Gatsby comes one of the most memorable unreliable narrators in years.
 
Rose Baker seals men’s fates. With a few strokes of the keys that sit before her, she can send a person away for life in prison. A typist in a New York City Police Department precinct, Rose is like a high priestess. Confessions are her job. It is 1923, and while she may hear every detail about shootings, knifings, and murders, as soon as she leaves the interrogation room she is once again the weaker sex, best suited for filing and making coffee.

This is a new era for women, and New York is a confusing place for Rose. Gone are the Victorian standards of what is acceptable. All around her women bob their hair, they smoke, they go to speakeasies. Yet prudish Rose is stuck in the fading light of yesteryear, searching for the nurturing companionship that eluded her childhood. When glamorous Odalie, a new girl, joins the typing pool, despite her best intentions Rose falls under Odalie’s spell. As the two women navigate between the sparkling underworld of speakeasies by night and their work at the station by day, Rose is drawn fully into Odalie’s high-stakes world. And soon her fascination with Odalie turns into an obsession from which she may never recover.

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Today’s post by author Kim Boykin | @AuthorKimBoykin

We’re giving away a copy of Kim’s novel, THE WISDOM OF HAIR, today. Leave a comment on this post to be entered.

Kim Boykin

My life reads a little like a fairy tale, but not like you think. I had two older sisters who were thirteen months apart, not quite Irish twins but close enough that they cannon balled into the gene pool and got all the good chromosomes. Or at least the ones that are considered important 0-21 years old. They were great students in all their subjects, even math, and great test takers, turning in eye-popping scores on their SATs.

Meanwhile, I was sitting on the end of my bed every report card period with my sweet Mom, who in a very loving, non-threatening, and mostly bewildered kind of way, wondered out loud, “Why can’t you be like your sisters?”

Fast forward enough years to make me blush and WALLAH! I’ve written a book called The Wisdom of Hair that a real publisher paid good money for and people can actually buy. This has absolutely nothing to do with my earlier whining, I just like to say it.

ANYHOW, my point in said whining is that I was extremely ADHD and didn’t know it until my kids were diagnosed about fifteen years after the last time my mom sat me down. For that.

In The Wisdom of Hair, Sarah Jane Farquhar is protagonist Zora Adams’ best friend. Sarah Jane is a hair progeny who enrolls in beauty school but knows she’ll never be able to pass the written state exam because can’t remember anything she reads. Unless of course she’s highly interested in it.

Zora refuses to accept the fact that Sarah Jane is so talented but can’t pass a test to save her soul, so she figures out a way to make Sara Jane’s ADHDness work for her.

Sara Jane made a D+ on the next test. Both of us were proud, like she had just won the Nobel Prize for hair. I’d figured out a way to help her memorize facts she thought she could never remember, like the names of frontal facial muscles, by turning anatomy into a trashy romance. One muscle was the heroine, another the hero, and nerves and sinus cavities were the villains. Smaller, less significant muscles were the servants or animals. I swear, if Mrs. Cathcart had written that test the way Sara Jane learned it, I know she would have made an A+.

Although it didn’t seem so great growing up, and nobody had a clue as to what my “problem” actually was, aside from getting the storytelling gift from my grand pa, being ADHD is probably the best thing I could have gotten out of the gene pool. It makes me laser focused on my story, and when the rest of the world is paying attention to the stuff they’re supposed to be noticing, I’m seeing things they over look. Things that make my writing richer.

“The problem with cutting your own hair is that once you start, you just keep cutting, trying to fix it, and the truth is, some things can never be fixed.

The day of my daddy’s funeral, I cut my bangs until they were the length of those little paintbrushes that come with dime-store watercolor sets. I was nine years old.

People asked me why I did it, but I was too young then to know I was changing my hair because I wanted to change my life.”

In 1983, on her nineteenth birthday, Zora Adams finally says goodbye to her alcoholic mother and their tiny town in the mountains of South Carolina. Living with a woman who dresses like Judy Garland and brings home a different man each night is not a pretty existence, and Zora is ready for life to be beautiful.

With the help of a beloved teacher, she moves to a coastal town and enrolls in the Davenport School of Beauty. Under the tutelage of Mrs. Cathcart, she learns the art of fixing hair, and becomes fast friends with the lively Sara Jane Farquhar, a natural hair stylist. She also falls hard for handsome young widower Winston Sawyer, who is drowning his grief in bourbon. She couldn’t save Mama, but maybe she can save him

As Zora practices finger waves, updos, and spit curls, she also comes to learn that few things are permanent in this life—except real love, lasting friendship, and, ultimately… forgiveness.

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

• 
• 
• 
• 
•