"Deeply, satisfyingly original…Elegies is the literary equivalent of a hand grenade." —Joanna Smith Rakoff, New York Times Book Review Who are the people you’ll never forget? For Mary Murphy, there are five, eulogized here in an utterly unforgettable voice. Mary tells the story of her own life—her childhood spent trading one home and father figure for another, her efforts to track down her rebellious sister, and her winding search for purpose—through her experiences and encounters with the people who shaped her path. The result is an unconventional and moving story about identity, family, and belonging.
Mary Murphy searches for identity and purpose as she tells the story of her erratic childhood, her runaway sister, and the histories of people with whom she's crossed paths.
Starting in the late 1970s, tens of thousands of American industrial workers lost jobs in factories and mines. Deindustrialization had dramatic effects on those workers and their communities, but its longterm effects continue to ripple through working-class culture. Economic restructuring changed the experience of work, disrupted people’s sense of self, reshaped local landscapes, and redefined community identities and expectations. Through it all, working-class writers have told stories that reflect the importance of memory and the struggle to imagine a different future. These stories make clear that the social costs of deindustrialization affect not only those who lost their jobs but also their children, their communities, and American culture. Through analysis of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, film, and drama, The Half-Life of Deindustrialization shows why people and communities cannot simply “get over” the losses of economic restructuring. The past provides inspiration and strength for working-class people, even as the contrast between past and present highlights what has been lost in the service economy. The memory of productive labor and stable, proud working-class communities shapes how people respond to contemporary economic, social, and political issues. These stories can help us understand the resentment, frustration, pride, and persistence of the American working class.
Ring in the New Year in style with The Southern Review's jewel-studded winter 2012 issue. Featured poets include Charles Simic, Mary Ruefle, Stephen Dunn, Bob Hicok, Wendy Barker, Elana Bell, Daniel Johnson, and Anna Journey. A snow-dusted Copenhagen at Christmas is the site of Thomas E. Kennedy's surprising and movingly human account of what it means to face death and emerge grateful to the world. Jason Brown brings us "Wintering Over," a chilling story about an artist couple isolated in a neglected Maine house over a winter that may be prove too long for them to endure. New fiction by Stuart Dybek, Christie Hodgen, Christine Sneed, Ted Sanders, and Reese Okyong Kwon joins nonfiction by Rachel Ida Buff and paintings by Gwyneth Scally.
Explore the Book is not a commentary with verse-by-verse annotations. Neither is it just a series of analyses and outlines. Rather, it is a complete Bible survey course. No one can finish this series of studies and remain unchanged. The reader will receive lifelong benefit and be enriched by these practical and understandable studies. Exposition, commentary, and practical application of the meaning and message of the Bible will be found throughout this giant volume. Bible students without any background in Bible study will find this book of immense help as will those who have spent much time studying the Scriptures, including pastors and teachers. Explore the Book is the result and culmination of a lifetime of dedicated Bible study and exposition on the part of Dr. Baxter. It shows throughout a deep awareness and appreciation of the grand themes of the gospel, as found from the opening book of the Bible through Revelation.
New Stories from the Midwest presents a collection of stories that celebrate an American region too often ignored in discussions about distinctive regional literature. The editors solicited nominations from more than three hundred magazines, literary journals, and small presses, and narrowed the selection to nineteen authors comprising prize winners and new and established authors. The stories, written by midwestern writers or focusing on the Midwest, demonstrate how the quality of fiction from and about the heart of the country rivals that of any other region. The anthology includes an introduction from Lee Martin and short fiction by emerging and established writers such as Rosellen Brown, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Christie Hodgen, Gregory Blake Smith, and Benjamin Percy.
Following the suicide of her beloved father, ten-year-old Frankie, her younger brother Teddy, and her mother Gerry each deal with their grief in their own way.
This Christmas brings an unexpected gift… For years, quilt making has been Sarah Smith’s creative outlet. When she starts donating her one-of-a-kind quilts to hospitalized wounded warriors, she hopes her artistic designs will bring the soldiers peace and the knowledge that their service is appreciated. But this holiday season, Sarah finds herself mired in an arm-length repair list for the B&B she’s hoping to open. Former Army Ranger Bodie Lewis knows he’s lucky to be alive. But he’s struggling to adjust to civilian life after his injury and mired in survivor guilt. Needing a distraction, he sets out on a private mission to thank the quilt maker for her gift that comforted him during his recovery. He’s hoping he can do a good deed in return. Bodie’s stunned the artist is a young, beautiful woman and amused she mistakes him for the handyman. Bodie works on Sarah’s home repairs and soon her sweetness and Christmas spirit imbue him with something he thought he left on the battlefield…hope.
After decades, former lovers come face to face in a novel filled with a “suspenseful dread that makes you want to turn every page at locomotive pace” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch). Cécile, a stylish forty-seven-year-old, has spent the weekend visiting her parents in a provincial town southeast of Paris. By early Monday morning, she’s exhausted. These trips back home are always stressful, and she settles into a train compartment with an empty seat beside her. But it’s soon occupied by a man she instantly recognizes: Philippe Leduc, with whom she had a passionate affair that ended in her brutal humiliation almost thirty years ago. In the fraught hour and a half that ensues, their express train hurtles toward the French capital. Cécile and Philippe undertake their own face-to-face journey—In silence? What could they possibly say to one another?—with the reader gaining entrée to the most private of thoughts. This intense, intimate novel offers “a taut, suspenseful psychological journey from which there is no escape . . . Gripping” (Kati Marton, author of Paris: A Love Story). “Perfectly written and a remarkably suspenseful read . . . Absorbing, intriguing, insightful.” —Library Journal (starred review)
Set in the summer of 1979, when America was running out of gas, The Lines tells the story of a family of four—the mother, the father, the girl, and the boy—in the first months of a marital separation. Through alternating perspectives, we follow the family as they explore new territory, new living arrangements, and new complications. The mother returns to school. The father moves into an apartment. The girl squares off with her mother, while the boy struggles to make sense of the world. The Lines explores the way we are all tied to one another, and how all experience offers the possibility of love and connection as much as loss and change.
