A Long Way Home

I can still remember the day Albie came home from the war.  I can still remember how happy everybody was and how nice things were at our house while we were waiting for him.  You might think that I was too young at the time to remember anything that happened so long ago, but when something very important happens it is often more difficult to forget than to remember.

When I got up, I could tell right away that the day was something special.  Downstairs everything was clean and shiny and had a fresh, out-of-doors sort of smell, and there were flowers on the table– red, dark red, real dark red roses that Mom had picked from out along the fence.  Some new yellow curtains, that she had been making for a long time, were up in the kitchen, and I could smell the warm, sweet smell of pie baking.  The minute I went into the kitchen and saw Mom I remembered why everything was so different and so nice– today was the day Albie was coming home.

“Good morning, Jack!” my mother said.  She was smiling and looked very happy.

“Morning,” I said.

“And did you have a good night’s sleep?”

She had never before asked me this question, and I did not know exactly how to answer it.  I said: “Okay, I guess,” but I don’t think she was listening.  She was doing something else, and saying:

“Do you know where your father is?”

“No.”

“He’s gone down to the station.”

“Huh?”

“The railroad station,” she said.  She took out a pie and put it on the window sill, holding it carefully with potholders so she would not burn her hands.

“The railroad station is where the trains come in, Jack.”

“Oh, like in the movie we saw last week!”

“Yes, Jack, yes, you’re right!”  She looked very happy and even smiled at me instead of scolding me for being stupid as she sometimes did.  “You’re absolutely right! Oh, Jack, isn’t it just wonderful?”

“You mean Albie coming home?”

“Why, of course!  What else could I mean?” She went to the window and looked out at the road.  “You don’t know how afraid I’ve been, all these months.  Thinking– just thinking, and not being able to do anything– sitting home here and just thinking and worrying about him . . . so far away.  But now he’s here!  He’s why, he’s within the state already, and he’s coming this way.  He’s coming home.”

“Will we go fishing again?” I asked.

“Not today.”

“I want to go fishing today.”

“No, no, you can’t! Today is something special; your brother is coming home,” she said.  She was not looking at me.  “You have to be dressed nicely and be very nice to him and make things as nice here as possible, so he will realize how valuable his home is. Out on the battlefield, away from his parents and his home, a boy might begin to forget . . . but not Albie.”

“Maybe we can go fishing tomorrow.”

“His letters were so short, and some of them didn’t come for so long,” she went on slowly.  “And sometimes . . . Well, they must have been lost in the mails; the mails here are so bad, and of course across the ocean the mail service is absolutely terrible . . . everybody knows that.”

“Wait till he sees how I painted the boat,” I said.

“He’ll love it here.  Everything is fixed up for him. I’ve made a pie and we’re having chicken for supper and everything is just going to be wonderful. Compared to what he’s been through . . . he’ll love it here.”

“When will he be here?”

“What, Jack? What did you say?”

“When will he get here?”

“In about an hour.” She turned and looked at me with a smile, but it faded from her face when she saw me.  “Jack! I told you last night to put on your new shirt and trousers this morning!”

“But I’m going fishing afterward, and you always tell me to wear my jeans . . .”

“Can’t you understand? Can’t you understand that today is something special?” she asked.  She was getting angry, and I did not want to be hit. “Your brother is coming home. Albie is coming home.  Can’t you understand that– don’t you have any feelings at all?”

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

“Oh, you’re not really.  You’re not; you know it, you just deliberately forgot about it,” she said.  “You do anything to make me angry, when you know what headaches it gives me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll put the other things on.” I went out of the kitchen and back upstairs and changed my clothes, and this time I did not come back down again.

I sat by my window and looked out, and it was a beautiful day.  There were birds in the tree outside the window, and they all seemed very happy, and everything was perfect. It was a good day for fishing, and I could not understand why Albie would not want to go.  He always loved fishing, and I should have thought it would be the first thing he would want to do.  It would be for me.

I looked at Albie’s bed.  Mom had made a new bedspread for it, a pretty blue one that was a lot prettier than my grey one.  Albie ought to like it, she said, because it was so gay and so pretty and he would want things to be gay and pretty after the war and everything.  I did not know what she meant by everything, but when I asked her she just said that she did not know herself, and so I forgot about it.  Up on the wall was the football letter Albie had got in high school.  He had been wonderful; Mom told me he had been captain of the football team and in every activity at school and one of the most popular boys.  She only wished that I would be like him, but she said that it did not look as though I would.  It was funny, but I did not remember any of these things about Albie.  I did not remember him in football games although I know I went to many of them.  I did not remember him as sitting around home and being so nice and polite and helping with all the work as Mom told me he was, and as Mom told me I ought to try to be.  I remembered Albie only as an almost faceless, pleasant boy who went fishing with me and even let me row sometimes.  I remembered that he smiled a lot when we were outside and that he was very nice, while my friend Bill’s big brother would always chase us and never was nice to us at all.  I remembered how we would talk late into the night about things, about Christmas and Halloween and school and how he would take care of any of the big boys who acted tough with me when I went to school on the first day.  I remembered sled riding in winter and running out on the ice on the creek, and I remembered fishing again, and being taught how to pitch although I was really too young to be able to throw hard.

I remember Albie sitting with the big boys in the back of the bus.  I remembered being proud and glad that he was as good as any of them and that he even talked to me once in a while when we were on the school bus.  I remembered the day he went away with the suitcases and how everybody had gone along with him to the “station” and I had been left home with my sister, Anna, and how they had all come home very sad and were mad at me for any little thing I did.  I remembered all these things although I did not even have to try, and although I did not even know that I knew them.  They all came back just like that, and it made me glad to know that Albie was coming home after so long.

Later on I saw the car come into the driveway, and I went downstairs.  My mother had run outside and had even let the screen door slam, so I did the same thing.  I felt terribly happy and I looked to see if everyone else felt the same way so I would not be scolded or anything, and they all looked happy too and so I did not have to worry.  My sister Ann and my mother and my aunt Alma were all out by the car.  They were very happy, putting their arms around Albie’s neck and kissing him and saying how glad they were that he was back, and how wonderful it was to see him again.  Dad, too, was very happy although he stood back and let my mother and aunt and sister talk as much as they wanted.  I went up to the car to get a look at him; it had been so long since I had seen him last.  Now that I got closer I felt almost sad, because I did not know what I could say to him, and I suddenly had the idea that maybe he was grown up now and like my father and mother.

“Where’s Jack? Hey, where’s Jack? Oh, there he is–! Hi, Jack,” Albie said.

“Hi,” I said.

“You don’t look very happy,” Albie said.  He was smiling in a funny way, and I could see that he was not the same.  It made me feel all the sadder, because I had never thought that when Albie went away that he would not come back Albie again.

“I want to go fishing with you,” I said.

“Jack!” my mother said.  She was surprised and angry.

Albie looked over toward the creek. “I’ve been thinking about fishing, he said. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”

“I go almost every day,” I said.

“Who do you go with?”

“Oh, Bill, now.”

“Do you catch much?”

“No.”

He looked around at the tear-stained faces of my mother and sister and aunt.  “We’ll go sometime, you and I,” he said. “You don’t know how I’ve been thinking about it.”

“About fish?” I asked. “About the twenty-incher you got that time?”

“No, not about fish,” he said. “Just about the creek and how we would go rowing on it, trolling at night.”

“But we never caught much then.”

“Oh, you two!” Mom said suddenly, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. “Talking about fishing, and at a time like this! Oh, Albie, you don’t know how wonderful it is to see you again–! But I must get a grip on myself, I must calm down.  As you can see, Albie, since you went away, I’m not . . . I’m not very– well.”

My aunt Alma put her hand on Mom’s arm and said: “Now you just come inside.  We’ll all go inside and talk about things, and then it will be about time for lunch.  Wouldn’t you like that?  Now, of course, you would. — You’ve gotten thinner, Albie, I do declare! We’ll have to put some more of that fat back on you, won’t we? My, how thin your face is!”

Albie brought his things into the house and put them upstairs in his room, and when he came down again we all sat in the living room and talked.  My mother had very much to tell him, although I cannot remember any of it now.  My father told him something about a job waiting for him, a good job and a place in the union, too, and how they were always looking for good men. My aunt told him some thing about the family, how old Uncle Pete who had died last winter and how he had suffered at the end, and about Martha, who had had that terrible three hour operation, and about her own troubles that she was having with her heart– or she thought it was her heart.  My sister Ann told him about some girl named Cindy that he apparently had known, because he was interested for a while.  My sister said something about the girl coming over for dinner that night, but then Albie had stopped smiling.  He did not look well.

“I saw Cindy the other day in town,” Mom said.  She was still dabbing at her eyes although she did not seem to be crying any longer.  “Just the other day, in front of the bakery. Of course she knows all about your coming home, probably even knew about it before I did; I wouldn’t doubt it any–! And we were both so excited; we were both so happy–! Why, even now I can hardly believe that–”

“It’s all fixed up with this man, this Morgan, I was telling you about,” Dad said. “You’ll start in sort of low, of course, but pretty high compared to what you’d get in any other job. Like I said, they’re looking for bright young men to keep industry going.  Union looking for ‘em too.  You’re in, solid, and let me tell you that being my son might have just a little bit to do with it.” He laughed and offered Albie a cigarette, which he took and lit for himself. “Yessir, just a little bit to do with it! You don’t know how good it makes a man feel to be able to help his son out.”

“Do you suppose you and Cindy will be getting married now?” my mother asked. “Such a lovely, wonderful child that girl is! Of course, both of you are so young, so terribly young, but it would be so nice . . . She thinks the world of you, Albie, just like we all do!”

“And about transportation, son.  There won’t be any fooling around with buses or anything. You’ll get a ride with some guys I know who go right by the plant– Al Robinson and Steve Martin.  You know them, don’t you? Sure you do, you used to go and watch me bowl and they were on my team.  Well, you’ll get a ride with them and there won’t be any fooling around with buses– late half the time and so far to walk anyway.  Things are all planned.  It’ll be just like it would have been if you’d never even left.”

“Cindy’s coming over tonight.  Did Ann tell you?  Oh, Albie, I’ve made the most wonderful dinner for us– I can’t wait till you taste it! It’s so wonderful to have you back again, to see you . . . You know, you haven’t changed a bit, not a single tiny bit! You’re still my Albie, my little Albie . . . oh thank God you’re here with us and safe!”

Albie looked away from her and kept on smoking the cigarette.  I did not remember that he smoked, but somehow it did not surprise me.  He wasn’t Albie.  I wasn’t the boy I remembered, the boy with whom I had gone fishing and fought and talked and gotten into trouble.  He was somebody else.  I did not know this somebody else, and I did not dislike this somebody else, but I wanted to like him very much and I felt very sorry for him.  I just kept staring and did not say a thing.

Albie looked at me and said:

“Maybe you’re thinking you won’t be wanting to share a room with me.”

“No,” I said.  “I don’t mind.”

“Of course he doesn’t,” my mother said sharply.  “He certainly doesn’t–”

“Did you miss me, Jack?” he asked.

I did not know what to say. “Yes,” I said after a moment. “I missed you at first because it was so lonely at night, and I didn’t have anyone to go out on the creek with.”

“And then–?”

“I sort of forgot after a while.”

“That’s good, Jack.”

“Why, you terrible little brat!” my mother said.  “Did you hear him, Harry?  Did you hear what that boy said– to his own brother?”

“I’m sorry if it’s wrong,” I said.  I was becoming afraid.  I thought he might hit me.  “I’m sorry, I really am!”

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” my father said.  He was angry.  “Go outside, Jack.  Go outside and play with Bill.  Go fishing– go on.”

“Change your clothes first,” my mother said.

When I had gone as far as the doorway, I heard Albie say:

“I’m going to go with him.”

“But, Albie, we have so much to talk about . . . ”

“I know he didn’t mean what he said; he’s so little.  Think when you were his age!”

“I want to go out with him,” Albie said.  He had not finished his cigarette but he put it out in an ash tray.

“Albie,” my mother said.  She began to cry again. “Don’t you want to talk to us>  Don’t you want to tell us everything that you did?

“No,” he said.

She wiped her eyes.  “Albie, dear!  Don’t you see how everything is fixed up for you?  Don’t you see how pretty everything is?”

“Nothing’s pretty,” he said.

My mother got up.  “Look at these curtains, Albie!  Just look at them!  Why, I worked for hours and hours to get them done  in time for your homecoming, just for you.  Don’t you think they’re beautiful?  Would you like some in your room, maybe?  I could make them if you wanted–”

“I don’t want any in my room,” he said.

My mother went to the table.  “Look at the beautiful roses I picked!  They’re growing out along the fence yet, the same kind you used to pick me when you were Jack’s age . . . Aren’t they beautiful, Albie?  Don’t you think they’re beautiful?”

“They’re red,” he said.  He looked sick.  “I hate red.”

“Albie, is something wrong with you?” my mother asked.  She went to him and tried to put her arms around his neck, but he would have none of it.  “What’s wrong?  Can’t you tell me? Don’t you see how we’ve fixed everything up for you?  Can’t you smell the pie and the flowers, and everything– all for you?”

He would not answer, and she went on, trying to smile as though she thought herself silly: “Albie, you just can’t imagine all the days and nights I’ve worried about you . . . all the things I knitted to send to you, and all the letters I wrote . . . Can’t you say thank you?  Can’t you tell me you were glad to get them?”  She could not smile any longer and said in a fast, shaking, almost hysterical voice: “The scarf!  The one with your initials on it, in your favorite color blue!  Did it keep you warm out there?  Why didn’t you ever say thank you for it? Can’t you say thank you now?”

He turned away and did not answer.

She took hold of his arm.  “I don’t understand what’s wrong with you.”

He kept looking out the window.  He said nothing, and I felt sorry for him because I knew he had nothing to say, in the same way that I no longer had anything to say to him.

“Albie, you act as though you don’t love us!  You act as though you– don’t even know us anymore!”

She clutched at his arm, grabbing the dull khaki cloth.  “Can’t you say anything?  What’s wrong?– You’re tired; that’s what it is; you’re tired and hungry and– Just go along now and change your clothes, and after you’ve eaten everything will be all right, everything will be just the way it was before–”

“But it won’t!” Albie said.  He pulled his arm away from her slowly, almost reluctantly.  “You don’t understand,” he said, as though he himself did not understand either.  “It won’t be the same.”

They looked at each other.  My mother said,”What . . . won’t be the same?”

“I don’t know,” said Albie.  He was trying not to hurt her, but it was a difficult thing to do.  “It’s something you . . . can’t understand.”

“Albie– what– where are you going?”

“I don’t know yet,” he said, “but I have to leave.”

“You can’t, you just came home!”

“I have to leave,” he said.  “I can’t stay here.  I’m sorry, but I can’t stay here.”  He felt bad about this, but he knew it had to be done, and he was trying not to hurt her.  He was really trying his best not to hurt her.

They stared at him in silence.  He left the living room and went upstairs, and when he came down again he was carrying his suitcases.  He went right on outside again, not looking toward us, and they hurried out after him.

I went back up to my room.  It was all mine now, but I realized it had been all mine for a long time.  I sat for a while on the other bed and felt the pretty blue bedspread and even got it a little dirty from my shoes.  After a while I got up and took down the big football letter.  It had been getting dusty on the wall and I knew that, underneath my shirts in the drawer, it would be much easier to forget about.

–Irene Newman

About the book

For Sean Corrigan the past is simply what happened yesterday, until his twenty-first birthday, when he’s given a journal left to him by his father’s brother Michael–a man he had not known existed. The journal, kept after his uncle fled from New York City to Ireland to escape prosecution for a murder he did not commit, draws Sean into a hunt for the truth about Michael’s fate.

Sean also leaves New York for Ireland, where he is caught up in the lives of people who not only know all about Michael Corrigan but have a score to settle. As his connection to his uncle grows stronger, he realizes that within the tattered journal lies the story of his own life–his past as wel as his future–and the key to finding the one woman he is fated to love forever.

Praise for Until the Next Time:

“A taut suspense novel, a history lesson on a people’s enduring struggle, and a chronicle of a star-crossed pair’s everlasting love.”
–Sandra Brown, New York Times bestselling author of Lethal

“Epic, riveting, and bold . . . Makes your heart race. Kevin Fox has crafted a tautly paced thriller melded to a love story that transcends time . . . Until the Next Time has the dark, evocative intensity of the best Irish fiction . . . Exquisitely rendered, impossible to put down.” 
–Dawn Tripp, author of Game of Secrets

“A fresh and fascinating take on an absoring concoction of myth, belief, memory, identity, reincarnation, and the lasting power of love . . . Both entertaining and provocative.” 
–Publishers Weekly

Lee Smith–Algonquin author of  Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger–will serve as the honorary chair of the luncheon. The luncheon will take place on the afternoon of Monday, February 20th, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. at the Carolina Inn and tickets can be purchased on the Orange County Literary Council’s website. The event will be emceed by the always hilarious Daniel Wallace, whose best-selling novel, Big Fish, was just re-published by Algonquin in a new paperback format.

There’s also a Meet the Authors Gala Literary Reception on Sunday, February 19th, from 5:00 – 700 p.m.

We look forward to seeing you at one or both of these events!

AHH, FEBRUARY, THE MONTH OF LOVE!

Robert Olmstead (Far Bright Star) on Michael Parker‘s If You Want Me to Stay: 

Michael Parker’s novel makes me think of Dickens, Twain, and Salinger, the unforgettable voices of boys’ lives. I think there used to be a time when we read for meaning—here’s your chance to do it again.

Amy Stewart (Wicked Bugs) on Richard Goodman‘s French Dirt:

Richard Goodman is smart, funny, and sophisticated, but hopelessly naïve when it comes to planting a garden. This is armchair horticulture—and armchair travel—at its best.

Hillary Jordan (When She Woke) on Jill McCorkle‘s Going Away Shoes:

I love Jill McCorkle for her wise and delicious wit, her ability to find humor in the tedium and sorrows of everyday life, and for sentences like, “Bob could dive into a pile of shit and come out riding a silver pony.”

Jonathan Evison (West of Here) on Larry Brown’s Dirty Work:

Larry Brown is gritty, inventive, and musical. Read him. Love him. Gift him. His debut novel, Dirty Work, is a great place to start.

Caroline Leavitt (Pictures of You) on Brock Clarke’s An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England:

An accidental arsonist turned husband and father has to grapple with his past when fires start igniting once again. Deliciously dark and funny—I would marry this novel if I could.

Tayari Jones (Silver Sparrow) on Jim Grimsley‘s Winter Birds:

Grimsley is a virtuoso with a mastery of language that makes you forgive him for completely breaking your heart with this gorgeous and unforgettable novel.

Heidi Durrow (The Girl Who Fell from the Sky) on Joseph Skibell‘s A Blessing on the Moon:

A lyrical, unflinching look at one of our darkest hours as a civilization, but Skibell’s writing sings despite the horror and grief it describes. It’s one of my all-time favorites!

Looking for the perfect Valentine’s Day dessert to show your loved one how much you care? Try this amazing raspberry-almond trifle that’s guaranteed to give any dessert-lover weak knees. (And don’t be shy about putting the raspberries and toasted almonds in a heart shape on top.)

From everyone here at Algonquin – Happy Valentine’s Day!

 –Kelly Bowen

RASPBERRY-ALMOND TRIFLE

Ingredients:

3 cups whole milk
6 large egg yolks
½ cup cornstarch
2/3 cup plus 2 tbsp. sugar
4 tbsp. brandy or sherry (Note from Kelly: I used sherry cooking wine)
3 large oranges
3 containers (6 oz. each) fresh raspberries
¼ cup honey
2 frozen pound cakes (10.75 oz. each)
1/3 cup seedless raspberry jam (Note from Kelly: make sure its seedless!)
1 cup heavy cream or whipping cream (Note from Kelly: can use regular, store-bought whipped cream)
5 oz. amaretti cookies, coarsely chopped (2 cups), OPTIONAL
¼ cup sliced almonds, toasted

1. In a 4-quart saucepan, heat milk on medium until bubbles form around the edge. Meanwhile, in large bowl whisk egg yolks, cornstarch, and 2/3 cup sugar. Add ¼ cup hot milk to the bowl and whisk well. Repeat until milk is fully incorporated.

2. Return mixture to saucepan. Cook on medium-low 7-9 minutes or until mixture is very thick and registers 160ºF on candy thermometer, whisking constantly. Remove from heat and whisk in 2 tbsp. brandy. If mixture is lumpy, whisk well to remove lumps. Transfer mixture to large bowl. Press plastic wrap directly onto surface, refrigerate until cold and stiff. Custard can be refrigerated up to 3 days.

3. With sharp knife, cut peel and white pith from orange, discard. Cut on either side of membrane to remove each segment from orange, place segments in large bowl. (Note from Kelly: save yourself oodles of time by cutting the orange in half and using a grapefruit thingy to get out the orange pulp.) Reserve ½ cup raspberries for garnish. Add honey and remaining raspberries and 2 tbsp. brandy. Fold gently to coat.

4. On cutting board, with long, serrated knife, trim top, bottom, and sides of 1 cake to form even rectangle; place trimmings in a large bowl. Stand cake up on one long, narrow side. Cut lengthwise into ¼ inch thick slices. Spread thin layer of jam on half of slices.Sandwichwith remaining slices. Repeat with second cake.

5. Measure height of 4-5 quart straight sided trifle bowl. Trim tops and bottoms of cake slices so cake sandwiches match height of bowl. Add trimmings to those in bowl. Cut cake sandwiches lengthwise into ¼ inch thick strips. Arrange 1 strip upright against side of trifle bowl, gently pressing cut side with jam against glass. Press another strip upright next to it; repeat with remaining strips until side of bowl is covered.

6. In large bowl, with mixer on medium speed, beat cream with 2 tbsp. sugar until soft peaks form. (If you aren’t using store-bought whipped cream)

7. Coarsely chop cake trimmings. Into center of trifle bowl, spread even layer of two-thirds of pound cake trimmings, and amaretti, if using. Spoon half of fruit, with its juices, over cake. Spread half of custard over fruit. Repeat layering. Top with whipped cream. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 4 hours and up to 1 day.

8. When ready to serve, garnish with toasted almonds and remaining raspberries.

Name:

Bookstore: Fountain Bookstore

Title: Boss Lady

Brief Bio: Kelly bought The Fountain in January 2008 after managing it since 2000 and she has been a professional independent bookseller since 1989.

What books recently rocked my world: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami: trippy. Oh, and The Casserole Queens Cookbook. I wore a little apron around the store for weeks in celebration of its publication.

Best damn event(s) we’ve hosted: Having Alton Brown sign a kid’s day-old appendectomy scar was pretty special. Listening to Tom Wolfe rap explicit, fake hip-hop lyrics in the church where Robert E. Lee worshiped was surreal.

I have to say my favorite events are with the first time authors. I think they are some of the most exceptional events we do.

Bringing an author into the Fountain Family is an experience many never forget, but most eventually call off the lawyers and we have a good laugh about it.

Most entertaining author(s) we’ve hosted: Recently, Simon VanBooy (Everything Beautiful Began After) left our audience charmed to the point of speechlessness. Jonathan Miles (Dear American Airlines) and Michael Knight (The Typist) are both wickedly funny men and rather dangerous when together. We all have a weak spot for Robert Goolrick (A Reliable Wife) because he is such a warm presenter and we love his books. And, of course, Maggie Stiefvater (The Scorpio Races/Shiver) not only makes customers in the store ecstatic, we ship her books all over the world to happy, happy people who love werewolves and kissing. She is always fun to have in the shop just to hang out.

Strangest question a customer has ever asked:  I get asked at least 5 times a year if we sell choir robes. What’s up with that?!?

Why our store kicks ass:  Anyone who says we don’t kick ass we lock in the bookstore basement until they say we do.

I promise you won’t find this at any other store:  A basement full of bodies.

Why I do what I do:  People think booksellers are booksellers because they love books, and some are. I love books, but I love people who love books more. I’m a bookseller because the written word is my favorite way to connect with others.

If I weren’t selling books I’d be:  A state extension agent specializing in beef cattle nutrition. No, really.

Books that changed my life:  1984—It’s not a perfect book, but I’ve read it at least ten times because it reminds me what it means to be human.

Susie Bright’s first three books—she redefined girl power (well, really woman power) for me and showed me that there is more than one way to be a feminist.

Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman—I reread from it all the time because it reminds me to live in the moment and appreciate the gift of the body.

Andrew Vachss’ Burke series taught me the real definitions of the words “friend” and “family.”

Harlan Ellison’s short fiction I go back to more than any other works, and I don’t understand why more people don’t read him. For a treat, (if you don’t have delicate sensibilities), check out the documentary on his life, Dreams with Sharp Teeth.

Top three authors, living or dead, I’d invite to my dinner party: Oscar Wilde, Anthony Bourdain, and Julia Child. If you can’t have a good time at that party, there’s something seriously wrong with you.

Top three songs on the soundtrack to my life: Can we go back to the book questions again?

My last meal request: I want to cook it myself. And to do that, I have to have my fantasy kitchen. Construction could take quite a long time. I’m registered at Vulcan Ranges, SubZero, Kohler, Mauviel, and Le Creuset. When you’re done shopping for me, let me know.

Evison’s epic novel received a boatload of accolades last year: Hudson Booksellers’ Book of the Year; winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Association award; a Bookpage Top 50 of 2011; an Amazon Top 100 of 2011; and a Booklist Editor’s Choice Award. It was also a #1 Indie Next Pick in hardcover.

And, of course, the reviews were outstanding:

“Riotously funny… wonderfully charming.” — New York Times Book Review

“[A] booming, bighearted epic.” — Vanity Fair

“[A] voracious story… Evison sets up evocative parallels between the characters in two time frames that demonstrate the poignant diminution of the American spirit… All these play out in Evison’s brisk, often comic, always deeply sympathetic narrative.” — Washington Post

“Big and unforgettable… West of Here is a sprawling tragicomic novel about identity—national and personal—that’s as entertaining as it is insightful.” – Miami Herald

“An enjoyable, meaty read–a vision of place told through the people who find themselves at the edge of America’s idea of itself.” — Los Angeles Times

See below for a brief video documentary of Evison. And here’s more about the book:

An exciting, innovative, and daring novel about history and how it happens, West of Here is an epic story of the spirit that inspired those dreamers and opportunists who settled the American Northwest, and of how their deeds—for better and for worse—forever altered the lives of those who came after them.

Set in the mythical town of Port Bonita, on Washington State’s Pacific coast, West of Here is propelled by a story that both re-creates and celebrates the American experience—it is storytelling on the grandest scale. With one segment of the narrative focused on the town’s founders circa 1890 and another showing the lives of their descendants in 2006, the novel develops as a kind of conversation between two epochs, one rushing blindly toward the future and the other struggling to undo the damage of the past. An exposition on the effects of time, on how something said or done in one generation keeps echoing through all the years that follow, it is a work of fiction that turns history into myth and myth into a nation’s shared experience.

Joseph Skibell

Skibell, composer Andy Teirstein, and artistic/managing director Mary-Louise Albert collaborated for A Blessing on the Moon: The Color of Poison Berries, which will open (as part of the Chutzpah! Festival) on February 11th at The Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre. The Warsaw Village Band (a seven-piece Polish folk group) will perform the magical surrealist tale of Chaim Skibelski, a wanderer in search of the afterlife after being brutally murdered by a German solider during Polish wartime.

You can check out the Warsaw Village Band performing a preview of A Blessing on the Moon: The Color of Poison Berries on February 6th at NYC’s (Le) Poisson Rouge. Come if you can! And in the meantime, you can read an excerpt from Skibell’s award-winning novel below.

Get ready for our next Algonquin Book Club event coming up on March 3 at 7:00 p.m. EST!  Tune into the live webcast to hear Stephen King in conversation with Lauren Grodstein, author of A Friend of the Family. While online, you’ll be able to chat with other book club participants and submit questions to be answered during the event.  Make sure you take a look at the Algonquin Book club website for an excerpt from A Friend of the Family, a reading group guide, and more.

We have 10 copies of A Friend of the Family up for grabs to those who want to participate in the live webcast. Just leave a comment here or on our Facebook page to enter. Good luck!

About A Friend of the Family:

A skilled internist with a thriving practice in suburban New Jersey, Pete Dizinoff has a devoted wife, an impressive house, and a son, Alec, on whom he’s pinned all his hopes. But Pete never counted on the wild card: Laura, his best friend’s daughter—ten years older than Alec, irresistibly beautiful, with a past so shocking that it’s never spoken of …

* A Washington Post Best Book of the Year selection
* A New York Times Editors’ Choice
* A Bookpage Best Fiction of the Year selection

“Such an incisive diagnosis of aspirational America that someone should hand out copies at Little League games and ballet recitals . . . Horrifyingly plausible and deeply poignant, A Friend of the Family will leave you shaken and chastened–and grateful for the warning.” –The Washington Post

“Stunning . . . An unqualified success . . . Grodstein’s sentences are finely made and precisely fitted to one another and her story . . . If there’s any justice in the world, A Friend of the Family will be her breakout book . . . She has written a novel that will leave her reader sitting up, sifting the evidence in the dead of night.” –The Boston Globe

“Grodstein, with one previous novel to her credit, has succeeded in shattering the image of suburban happiness. Her perceptive portrayals demonstrate the thinness of the veneer that separates bliss from gloom . . . [The story] is told with great understanding and sensitivity, gripping readers so that they will find the book hard to put down.” –The Chicago Tribune

“Involving at every level: character, plot, language. One of the more complicated portraits of a father’s love for his son we’ve ever read.” —McSweeney’s

“A persuasive indictment of a certain kind of privileged narrow-mindedness . . . in the best tradition of parenting gone catastrophically awry.” –O: The Oprah Magazine

“Grodstein’s harsh, honest prose makes this haunting tale worthwhile.” –People

“Beautifully captures the ever striving angst of parents who will take any step to ensure their children’s lives are easier or better.” –USA Today

“Grodstein’s superb storytelling entices us to keep plunging deeper despite dread of an ominous undertow.” –Providence Journal

Early Creatures, Native Gods
K. A. Hays
(recommended by Lauren Moseley)

In K. A. Hays’ second book of poems, out this month from Carnegie Mellon University Press, the speaker’s spiritual quest is both more urgent and full of doubt than it was in her first collection, Dear Apocalypse. In Early Creature, Native Gods, the soul is “at best, an idea or prayer the body has,” while skepticism is “a way of slowly offering a hand.” As much as the speaker rejects the existence of an omnipotent being, she repeatedly sees the mundane through a religious lens. For example, take her poem “Assumption”:

When a house occupies the last edge of ground
before the sea, and turns three faces to the tides,
that house is bound to flood. When the wind tilts rain

to the shingles, and the goosebumped skin
of the sea draws near, a person in the kitchen,
where rain pings in a bucket, might take comfort

in the story of the Virgin, who stayed whole
through the Assumption’s whirl and swagger,
then walked, unhurt,

to heaven. But—this body, shingled,
set in earth, breaks down. Falls loose.
Will not be assumed.

Given her poems’ vivid imagery, multiple layers, and sense of conflict, it’s no wonder Motionpoems chose Hays’ “Just As, After a Point, Job Cried Out” for their most recent short film. Whether accompanied by stunning animation or resting in lines on the page, Hays’ words will haunt you as only the “the truest poetry” can.

~~~~~~~~~~

Darkroom
Jazzy Dazinger
(recommended by Megan Fishmann)

Full disclosure: Jazzy Dazinger and I both attended UVA’s MFA program and did a joint reading at Bel Rio in Belmont. I’m thrilled that she recently won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry; Wisconsin University Press will publish her debut collection, Darkroom, March 26th.

In one of my favorite poems, “The Psychiatrist Teen Daughter Self-Evaluates,” Dazinger criticizes her teenage self:

When I was thirteen, Isabella Lombardi taught me
how to get a boy to approach you in the mall:
make eye contact as they come at you, lock your gaze
on them, then find a bench and sit down.
There are two kinds of boys, she said, those who follow me
and those who follow me. In other words,
she never failed.

Dazinger’s ghost women float through this poem: the bad girl teenager lamenting to her father, the bully of a friend who pushes impressionable girls to break all the rules. She continues, later in the poem:

Three months before my mother died
she bought me a silver dress that was too small for me.
She didn’t know this before she said, “You’ll look like Miss America,” since there are two
ways
to measure a daughter’s size: through the forgiving lens of love
and through the pucker of an unforgiving fabric.

Darkroom follows a young woman in the aftermath of her mother’s suicide; what makes Dazinger’s voice so powerful is the act of embracing the mother’s ghost. It is her evocative and painful memories, so beautifully composed, that linger with me still.