A socioeconomic viewpoint from a street survivor, in the San Francisco North Bay, where the greatest amount of disparity between economic classes exists in America. Struggling to survive without shelter, we chronicle the continuing journey through homelessness. The issue is taken to the political level and the experience becomes written works as Fast Eddie still searches for mercy and home.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER “Ms. Haigh is an expertly nuanced storyteller long overdue for major attention. Her work is gripping, real, and totally immersive, akin to that of writers as different as Richard Price, Richard Ford, and Richard Russo.”—Janet Maslin, New York Times The highly praised, “extraordinary” (New York Times Book Review) novel about the disparate lives that intersect at a women’s clinic in Boston, by New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Haigh For almost a decade, Claudia has counseled patients at Mercy Street, a clinic in the heart of the city. The work is consuming, the unending dramas of women in crisis. For its patients, Mercy Street offers more than health care; for many, it is a second chance. But outside the clinic, the reality is different. Anonymous threats are frequent. A small, determined group of anti-abortion demonstrators appears each morning at its door. As the protests intensify, fear creeps into Claudia’s days, a humming anxiety she manages with frequent visits to Timmy, an affable pot dealer in the midst of his own existential crisis. At Timmy’s, she encounters a random assortment of customers, including Anthony, a lost soul who spends most of his life online, chatting with the mysterious Excelsior11—the screenname of Victor Prine, an anti-abortion crusader who has set his sights on Mercy Street and is ready to risk it all for his beliefs. Mercy Street is a novel for right now, a story of the polarized American present. Jennifer Haigh, “an expert natural storyteller with a keen sense of her characters’ humanity” (New York Times), has written a groundbreaking novel, a fearless examination of one of the most divisive issues of our time.
New York Times Notable Book: A “beautifully written” memoir by the daughter of the brilliant, troubled poet (Detroit Free Press). This is an honest, unsparing account of the anguish and fierce love that bound a difficult mother and the daughter she left behind. Linda Sexton was twenty–one when her mother killed herself, and now she looks back, remembers, and tries to come to terms with her mother’s life. Growing up with Anne Sexton was a wild mixture of suicidal depression and manic happiness, inappropriate behavior and midnight trips to the psychiatric ward. Anne taught Linda how to write, how to see, how to imagine—and only Linda could have written a book that captures so vividly the intimate details and lingering emotions of their life together. Searching for Mercy Street speaks to everyone who admires Anne Sexton and to every daughter or son who knows the pain of an imperfect childhood. “Sexton forcefully communicates the fear, repulsion, neediness, and sorrow that filled her childhood, as well as the agony of her own mental breakdown and her terror of becoming like her mother, in lucid and vivid prose.” —The Boston Globe “A candid, often painful depiction of a daughter’s struggles to come to terms with her powerful and emotionally troubled mother.” —The New York Times
It's a coast to coast roller coaster ride of emotions, as Fast Eddie has love in NY burbs lost to cancer. He searches for the ultimate in Sonoma Co, SF's North Bay, success, failure and a 2nd chance at love are at stake in this search for the ultimate.
MERCY STREET is Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anne Sexton's only play and incorporates many of the themes that infuse her poetry, the deeply personal, the nature of madness, and the subjectivity of truth. "Anne Sexton, a fine poet with an astounding knack for incorporating the ugly and immediate vocabulary of the pressing workaday world into lyrics that nevertheless remain lyrics, is the author of MERCY STREET ... The play is constructed quite literally to resemble the Offertory in Anglican or Roman Catholic mass ... Miss Sexton's initial use of ritual is striking ... The exploration, in rotating flashbacks, produces some riveting line-images ..." -Walter Kerr, The New York Times ..". This is Miss Sexton's first play. She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, and the tone of her poems has always been laceratingly personal. In some she seemed like a latter-day, neurotic Emily Dickinson. The poems have a voice of their own, and a way with imagery. MERCY STREET is the story of a woman searching her way home from the valley of madness ... Miss Sexton has written a play to be considered rather than dismissed ..." -Clive Barnes, The New York Times
Joshua Tree National Park is the most popular rock climbing area in the world--and for good reason. When other climbing locales are buried in snow, Josh is basking in Southern California sunshine. Thousands of sport and traditional routes on park's distinctive domes offer climbers of all abilities endless variety, from classic, well-protected cracks to delicate friction faces and edgy vertical testpieces. Excellent bouldering abounds, and superb camping in the beautiful, high-desert environment encourages extended stays. Simply put, no climber's career is complete without at least one trip to Joshua Tree, and many people find themselves returning year after year. Rock Climbing Joshua Tree West is the first of two volumes that together replace Rock Climbing Joshua Tree, published in 1992 and 1986. Covering climbs in the western half of the park, completely revised and with thoroughly updated route information, and extensively illustrated, it's the climber's comprehensive and indispensable guide to the area.
With “elements of The Bold Type, Mad Men, and The Devil Wears Prada” (Entetainment Weekly), a young woman navigates a tricky twenty-first-century career—and the trickier question of who she wants to be—in this savagely wise debut novel Casey Pendergast is losing her way. Once a book-loving English major, Casey lands a job at a top ad agency that highly values her ability to tell a good story. Her best friend thinks she’s a sellout, but Casey tells herself that she’s just paying the bills—and she can’t help that she has champagne taste. When her hard-to-please boss assigns her to a top-secret campaign that pairs literary authors with corporations hungry for upmarket cachet, Casey is both excited and skeptical. But as she crisscrosses America, wooing her former idols, she’s shocked at how quickly they compromise their integrity: A short-story writer leaves academia to craft campaigns for a plus-size clothing chain, a reclusive nature writer signs away her life’s work to a manufacturer of granola bars. When she falls in love with one of her authors, Casey can no longer ignore her own nagging doubts about the human cost of her success. By the time the year’s biggest book festival rolls around in Las Vegas, it will take every ounce of Casey’s moxie to undo the damage—and, hopefully, save her own soul. Told in an unforgettable voice, with razor-sharp observations about everything from feminism to pop culture to social media, A Lady’s Guide to Selling Out is the story of a young woman untangling the contradictions of our era and trying to escape the rat race—by any means necessary. Praise for A Lady’s Guide to Selling Out “Bitingly funny . . . [Sally] Franson’s snappy debut nimbly skewers the high-flying world of advertising and romance in the age of social media. . . . Franson’s irresistibly flawed heroine holds her own as she strives to find honesty, meaning, and even love in a demanding world, resulting in an addictive, escapist novel.”—Publishers Weekly “A high-spirited heroine loses herself in a vortex of modern striving in this debut novel. . . . Come for the hilarious narration, stay for the whirlwind plot, luxuriate in the satirical gleam.”—Kirkus Reviews “A wry, observant take on career success and ambition.”—New York Post “A book lover is torn between a cushy gig and . . . well, her soul, basically.”—Cosmopolitan
