The Queen of the Tearling (Queen of the Tearling Series, 1)
Erika Johansen, 2014
HarperCollins
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062290366
Summary
Magic, adventure, mystery, and romance combine in this epic debut in which a young princess must reclaim her dead mother’s throne, learn to be a ruler—and defeat the Red Queen, a powerful and malevolent sorceress determined to destroy her.
On her nineteenth birthday, Princess Kelsea Raleigh Glynn, raised in exile, sets out on a perilous journey back to the castle of her birth to ascend her rightful throne. Plain and serious, a girl who loves books and learning, Kelsea bears little resemblance to her mother, the vain and frivolous Queen Elyssa.
But though she may be inexperienced and sheltered, Kelsea is not defenseless: Around her neck hangs the Tearling sapphire, a jewel of immense magical power; and accompanying her is the Queen’s Guard, a cadre of brave knights led by the enigmatic and dedicated Lazarus. Kelsea will need them all to survive a cabal of enemies who will use every weapon—from crimson-caped assassins to the darkest blood magic—to prevent her from wearing the crown.
Despite her royal blood, Kelsea feels like nothing so much as an insecure girl, a child called upon to lead a people and a kingdom about which she knows almost nothing. But what she discovers in the capital will change everything, confronting her with horrors she never imagined.
An act of singular daring will throw Kelsea’s kingdom into tumult, unleashing the vengeance of the tyrannical ruler of neighboring Mortmesne: the Red Queen, a sorceress possessed of the darkest magic. Now Kelsea will begin to discover whom among the servants, aristocracy, and her own guard she can trust.
But the quest to save her kingdom and meet her destiny has only just begun—a wondrous journey of self-discovery and a trial by fire that will make her a legend . . . if she can survive. (From the publisher.)
This is the first book of the series. The second is The Invasion of the Tearling, and the third is The Fate of the Tearling is the third.
Author Bio
Erika Johansen grew up and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She went to Swarthmore College, earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and eventually became an attorney, but she never stopped writing. (From the publisher.)
Read Erika's Buzzfeed article: Why We Need "Ugly" Heroines
Book Reviews
[A]n addictive and enjoyable adventure. Once you accept that sword and sorcery will be intermingled with references to electronics and books from the 20th century, the Tear is just as easy to get sucked into as Westeros or Hogwarts or Panem. Johansen may have created a complex kingdom, but you'll never feel lost in it.
Kelly Lawler - USA Today
Johansen starts strongly, with a forceful, memorable heroine...forced to make dynamic, if overly idealistic, decisions. While the setting and backstory could stand further explanation..., and many elements fall apart under closer scrutiny, this trilogy launch is still an engaging page-turner.
Publishers Weekly
[A] solid fantasy that doesn't stray very far from the traditional playbook. Intriguing references to a "great crossing" that happened 2,000 years ago and led to the immigrants' civilization losing access to higher technology could.... The novel does have a strong heroine...[and a] movie is already in the works with Emma Watson set to star.
Library Journal
Following the death of her mother, the queen, when she was just a toddler, Princess Kelsea has been raised in exile by foster parents. On her nineteenth birthday, it is time for her to take her rightful place as ruler.... This is book one in a series and, as befits a series starter, there are a great many unanswered questions looming despite the moment of triumph upon which the book concludes (Ages 15 to 18). — Sherrie Williams
VOYA
(Starred review.) In an impressive start to a series, Johansen expertly incorporates magic necklaces, political intrigue, questions of honor, well-drawn characters, and a bit of mystery into a compelling and empowering story. As much is (understandably) left unexplained, it will be interesting to see where future installments take this series. —Kerri Price
Booklist
Chick lit meets swords and sorcery in the perfect commodity for a hot demographic. But is it art? Debut novelist Johansen turns in a fantasy novel that’s derivative of Tolkien, as so many books in the genre are—it’s got its merry band of warriors, its struggle for a throne that has a long and tangled history, its battle for good and evil.... A middling Middle Earth–ian yarn.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Often in mythic tales the hero is separated from his or her parents and raised by another. What is significant about this element of the story?
2. Consider Kelsea's foster parents, Carlin and Barty. What does each contribute to her development and character?
3. A number of times Kelsea laments her isolation growing up, her not having siblings or close friends. How might this affect her behavior once she returns to the Keep?
4. Mace is a complex and mysterious character. What essential qualities does he possess? What kind of life experience might have formed these?
5. Kelsea is clearly drawn to the Fetch, despite his criminal and even violent ways. What does she see in him? How can a person who does such morally questionable things still be likable?
6. Kelsea is often said to have an "ungovernable temper." What might be the source of this anger? How does it serve her throughout the novel?
7. For much of her life, Kelsea idealizes her estranged mother, Queen Elyssa, but then finds her to be a flawed person. How does this affect Kelsea’s character?
8. It is said that Queen Elyssa wasn't evil but was weak. How are these different?
9. What is the significance of Kelsea's dreams and nightmares?
10. An epigraph from THE ARVATH ARCHIVE suggests that often, true heroic deeds are done in secret. What does such secrecy add? How might this be important to contemporary times of social media?
11. Much is made throughout the novel of Kelsea's "plain" appearance. What various effects might this lack of physical beauty have on her as a person and as a queen?
12. Consider the term "fey," seeing one's own death and exalting in it. How is it important to an understanding of Kelsea?
13. Javel assists the brutal work of Arlen Thorne as a way to possibly be reunited with Allie, his love lost to the slave trade. Does this justify his involvement? How would you describe his character?
14. Kelsea admits that Andalie possesses the qualities of a queen perhaps more than she does. What might she mean?
15. What's important about Marguerite, Thomas' beautiful slave freed by Kelsea?
16. Why is Kelsea so enamored of books and the idea of creating a new library, building a new printing press?
17. Kelsea experiences three wounds throughout the story to add to her burn scar. What's significant about these marks?
18. What do you think is next for the Queen of the Tearling?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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One Plus One
Jojo Moyes, 2014
Pamela Dorman Books
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525426585
Summary
One single mom. One chaotic family. One quirky stranger. One irresistible love story...
American audiences have fallen in love with Jojo Moyes. Ever since she debuted Stateside she has captivated readers and reviewers alike, and hit the New York Times bestseller list with the word-of-mouth sensation Me Before You.
Now, with One Plus One, she’s written another contemporary opposites-attract love story.
Suppose your life sucks. A lot. Your husband has done a vanishing act, your teenage stepson is being bullied, and your math whiz daughter has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that you can’t afford to pay for. That’s Jess’s life in a nutshell—until an unexpected knight in shining armor offers to rescue them.
Only Jess’s knight turns out to be Geeky Ed, the obnoxious tech millionaire whose vacation home she happens to clean. But Ed has big problems of his own, and driving the dysfunctional family to the Math Olympiad feels like his first unselfish act in ages....maybe ever.
One Plus One is Jojo Moyes at her astounding best. You’ll laugh, you’ll weep, and when you flip the last page, you’ll want to start all over again. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1969
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—B.A., London University
• Awards—Romantic Novel of the year (twice)
• Currently—lives in Essex, England
Jojo Moyes is a British journalist and the author of 10 novels published from 2002 to the present. She studied at Royal Holloway, University of London and Bedford New College, London University.
In 1992 she won a bursary financed by The Independent newspaper to attend the postgraduate newspaper journalism course at City University, London. She subsequently worked for The Independent for the next 10 years (except for one year, when she worked in Hong Kong for the Sunday Morning Post) in various roles, becoming Assistant News Editor in 1988. In 2002 she became the newspaper's Arts and Media Correspondent.
Moyes became a full-time novelist in 2002, when her first book Sheltering Rain was published. She is most well known for her later novels, The Last Letter From Your Lover (2010), Me Before You (2012), and The Girl You Left Behind ( 2013), all of which were received with wide critical accalim.
She is one of only a few authors to have won the Romantic Novelists' Association's Romantic Novel of the Year Award twice—in 2004 for Foreign Fruit and in 2011 for The Last Letter From Your Lover. She continues to write articles for The Daily Telegraph.
Moyes lives on a farm in Saffron Walden, Essex with her husband, journalist Charles Arthur, and their three children. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
[A] sobering commentary on the widening gap between haves and have-nots [and a]...quirky tale of lopsided families finding the courage to love.... There’s never anything predictable....exactly that quality that makes this offbeat journey so satisfying, and Moyes’s irrepressible flaws-and-all characters so memorable.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [O]ne fine novel. With its ensemble cast of skillfully crafted characters...each person’s story flows on its own, yet they all meld together into an uncommonly good story about family, trust, and love.... Bravo to Moyes for delivering toothsome characters in a story readers will truly care about. —Donna Chavez
Booklist
[A] warmhearted, off-kilter romance, this one between a financially strapped single mother and a geeky tech millionaire.... Unsurprisingly, hostility evolves into mutual attraction. But Moyes throws in a few wrenches.... Moyes has mastered the art of likable, not terribly memorable, but far from simple-minded storytelling.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Even though Marty himself is reluctant, Jess opens her home to Nicky, Marty’s son by “a woman he’d dated briefly in his teens” (p. 9), after his birth mother essentially abandons him. If you were Jess, would you be willing to raise Nicky as your own child?
2. Aileen Trent sells designer clothes at a cut rate to people who could never afford to buy them in the shops. Since Jess strongly suspects that they are stolen, is it wrong for her to buy a few items for Tanzie?
3. Jess takes the money that Ed drunkenly drops in the taxi and decides to use it to pay Tanzie’s registration fees. Would she have made that choice if he hadn’t behaved rudely to her while she was cleaning his house? Does his treatment of her excuse her decision?
4. Is it more difficult for the poor to lead law-abiding lives? To what extent is morality a matter of character or circumstance?
5. Ed’s parents couldn’t afford to send both Ed and his sister, Gemma, to public school, so they sent only him. Was it a fair decision? Is Gemma’s resentment justified?
6. Ed helps Nicky get revenge on Jason Fisher by showing him how to hack Jason’s Facebook page. Since Jason intimidated the witnesses to Nicky’s beating into not speaking out against him, is it a justifiable retaliation?
7. At what point in their journey does Ed begin to think less about himself and more about helping Tanzie and her family?
8. Does Ed’s ignorance mitigate the seriousness of his crime? Should he have spent time in prison, or do you feel he was given a fair sentence?
9. Jess’s mother “had been right about many things” (p. 166), but she never made her daughter feel loved. As a result, Jess makes it her priority as a mother to make Tanzie and Nicky feel loved. What is something that your parents did right? What is something they did wrong that you hope to rectify if you are or plan to become a parent yourself?
10. Do you support Jess’s decision to go into debt to pay for Norman’s hospital bills rather than put him to sleep?
11. Did Ed’s financial success go to his head, or was he self-centered before he was rich? What did he have to learn about himself in order to forgive Jess?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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The Fracking King
James Browning, 2014
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
192 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780544262997
Summary
A striking debut novel about boarding school, hardcore Scrabble, and fracking—a new kind of environmental novel by an important voice in the debate about fracking in America.
When the tap water at the Hale Boarding School for Boys bursts into flames, people blame fracking. Life at Hale has always been fraught—the swim test consists of being thrown into the pool with wrists and ankles tied, and a boy can be expelled if he and a girl keep fewer than "three feet on the floor."
But the sight of combustible drinking water and the possibility that fracking is making Hale kids sick turn one student into an unlikely hero in the fight to stop the controversial drilling practice.
Winston Crwth, a Scrabble prodigy whose baffling last name rhymes with "truth," knows what it’s like to be "fractured," having grown up with his father in Philadelphia and his mother in California. On Winston’s comic journey to the Pennsylvania State Scrabble Championship, where he hopes to win an audience with beauty-queen-turned-governor Linda King LaRue, he matches wits with Thomasina Wodtke-Weir, the headmaster’s prematurely gray daughter and the most popular (read: only) girl at school; the state poet laureate, whose verse consists of copying out dictionary entries and restroom graffiti; and David Dark, son of the CEO of Dark Oil & Gas, the source of Winston’s scholarship money.
The Fracking King is a fantastically inventive debut about rowing crew, using all your tiles, and trying to save the world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1969-70
• Where—Cleveland, Ohio, IUSA
• Education—B.A., Brown University; M.A., Johns Hopkins University
• Currently—lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvanai
James Browning is a spokesman and chief strategist for Common Cause, a government watchdog group. He attended Brown University and has an M.A. from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins. His nonfiction has been published in The Believer, The Village Voice, and elsewhere, and he is the co-author of “Deep Drilling, Deep Pockets,” a series of exposes about the political expenditures of the fracking industry.
He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, Elisabeth, and their two sons. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] playful debut about a serious subject: fracking.... Browning effortlessly translates his passion for environmental change into a rousing, witty, and enlightening tale of outsiders and Scrabble. That the author gets his environmental message across without sidetracking Win’s journey is a testament to his ability as a storyteller.
Publishers Weekly
In his whimsical first novel, Browning puts [his environmental] background to good use by satirizing fracking’s environmental hazards while recounting the story of precocious teenager and Scrabble fanatic Winston Win Crwth.... Browning’s clever and engaging debut, with its young Scrabble champion turned unlikely environmental advocate and timely ecological theme, is a funny and thought-provoking tale. —Carl Hays
Booklist
Probably the first novel to bring together the disparate elements of hydraulic fracturing, a struggling boarding school and tournament Scrabble.... The villains of the piece, such as they are, are the members of the Dark family..., which owns a gas and oil company that has tried to cover up the dangers of fracking.... The novel is fine as long as we’re attuned to the quirky characters, but the action remains rather precious and contrived.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
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Fourth of July Creek
Smith Henderson, 2014
HarperCollins
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062286444
Summary
After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral eleven-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face-to-face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times.
But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Pearl's activities spark the full-blown interest of the FBI, putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed.
In this shattering and iconic American novel, Smith Henderson explores the complexities of freedom, community, grace, suspicion, and anarchy, brilliantly depicting our nation's disquieting and violent contradictions. Fourth of July Creek is an unforgettable, unflinching debut that marks the arrival of a major literary talent. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1972-73
• Where—state of Montana, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Montana; M.A., University of Texas
• Awards—PEN Emerging Writer Award; Pushcart Prize
• Currently—lives in Portland, Oregon
Smith Henderson is the recipient of the 2011 PEN Emerging Writers Award in fiction. He was a Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University, a Pushcart Prize winner, and a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas. Born and raised in Montana, he now lives in Portland, Oregon. (From the publisher.)
More
Mr. Henderson comes from a long line of Montana cowboys, sheep herders and dynamiters. He was the first person in his immediate family to attend college. His parents married in high school and his father worked as a logger. He was able to afford college because his mother died of lung disease when he was 19, leaving him with insurance money. In what he calls "a fit of pure vocational idiocy," he majored in classics, and studied Latin and Greek at the University of Montana. He took the first paying job he could get out of college at a group home for juveniles in Missoula, working 36-hour weekend shifts. Like his protagonist, Mr. Henderson worked with children who had been through "massive abuse of every kind, extreme neglect, death, murders, every dark thing you could ever think could happen happened," he said.
He left the job after a couple of years and patched together a living from odd writing jobs. He worked in internal corporate communications for Apple and wrote for the chancellor's office at the University of Texas, working on his fiction on the side. He started working as a copywriter for Wieden+Kennedy in Portland in 2010. (Excerpt from Wall St. Journal.)
Book Reviews
[T]his not-to-be-missed first novel…is a Rorschach test of sorts. It may remind readers of many different writers, even though it's such an original. Mr. Henderson has prompted comparisons to a long list of novelists who've written about grim, hardscrabble lives in eloquent prose…a mix of Richard Ford's writing style with characters by Richard Russo. I'd add that there is much of early Russell Banks in Pete's keen awareness of his failings and desperate yearning for the decency that remains just out of reach. And there are hints of [another] bolt-from-the-blue debut: David Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (2008). This book is far darker…But its gripping story and shimmering sense of the natural world do bring that great debut to mind.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
[Cormac] McCarthy’s shadow may loom heavy across the prose...but the story this prose conveys, and the manner in which Henderson unfurls it, bears its own unalloyed power.... Henderson butters his characters with great gobs of compassion; only a few characters are denied extenuating circumstances for their sins and degradations.... If there’s a punching bag here, it’s the arrogance of societal strictures, which Henderson swings at by exploring the friction of the so-called greater good clashing with the individual good. As the title suggests, this is a book about freedom, and not unlike Jonathan Franzen’s novel about the same subject, it seeks to map the moral limits of freedom—that border ground where one person’s freedoms infringe upon another’s.
Jonathan Miles - New York Times Book Review
The best book I’ve read so far this year...Henderson choreographs these parts so masterfully that the novel is never less than wholly engaging… All week I was looking for opportunities to slip back into these pages and follow the trials of this rural social worker.... Henderson knows how to create the sensation that we’re being propelled through a story that’s just as poignant as it is frightening. Infused with psychological complexity and lush with the landscape of the Northwest, the novel barrels along with the chaotic demands of Pete’s job and family, from crisis to crisis to quiet scenes of despair.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Breathtaking...heartbreaking…Henderson’s immersive, colorful style makes this scenic journey worthwhile. He’s a curious kind of hard-boiled poet—part Raymond Chandler, part Denis Johnson.
Entertainment Weekly
This uneven debut, set in 1980 Montana, isn’t always able to sustain the interest of its opening sections. The first chapter introduces us to social worker Pete Snow, who has been called by the police to defuse a domestic dispute.... Snow’s efforts to help the Pearls despite the father’s hostility are the focus of the book, which is too long and features an unsatisfying ending.
Publishers Weekly
Graced with powerful characters and beautifully focused writing, Henderson's epic debut hit my desk the day a critic friend buttonholed me at an awards event to tell me that it was something special.... [I]t features social worker Pete Snow, increasingly dismayed with his job until he meets scrawny, untamed, 11-year-old Benjamin Pearl, whose crazy survivalist father is anticipating some kind of apocalypse.
Library Journal
(Starred review.)First-novelist Henderson not only displays an uncanny sense of place...he also creates an incredibly rich cast of characters, from Pete’s drunken, knuckleheaded friends to the hard-luck waitress who serves him coffee to the disturbed, love-sick survivalist. Dark, gritty, and oh so good. —Joanne Wilkinson
Booklist
[D]eep-turning plot twists [in a book about] a man looking for meaning in his own life while trying to help others too proud and mistrustful to receive that assistance. The story goes on a bit long, but the details are just right: It's expertly written and without a false note...in imagining a rural West that's seen better days—and perhaps better people, too.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
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Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands
Chris Bohjalian, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307743930
Summary
A heartbreaking, wildly inventive, and moving novel narrated by a teenage runaway.
Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is the story of Emily Shepard, a homeless teen living in an igloo made of ice and trash bags filled with frozen leaves. Half a year earlier, a nuclear plant in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom had experienced a cataclysmic meltdown, and both of Emily's parents were killed.
Devastatingly, her father was in charge of the plant, and the meltdown may have been his fault. Was he drunk when it happened? Thousands of people are forced to flee their homes in the Kingdom; rivers and forests are destroyed; and Emily feels certain that as the daughter of the most hated man in America, she is in danger.
So instead of following the social workers and her classmates after the meltdown, Emily takes off on her own for Burlington, where she survives by stealing, sleeping on the floor of a drug dealer's apartment, and inventing a new identity for herself—an identity inspired by her favorite poet, Emily Dickinson.
When Emily befriends a young homeless boy named Cameron, she protects him with a ferocity she didn't know she had. But she still can't outrun her past, can't escape her grief, can't hide forever—and so she comes up with the only plan that she can.
A story of loss, adventure, and the search for friendship in the wake of catastrophe, Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is one of Chris Bohjalian’s finest novels to date—breathtaking, wise, and utterly transporting. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Where—White Plains, New York, USA
• Education—Amherst College
• Awards—Anahid Literary Award, 2000; New England Book Award, 2002
• Currently—lives in Lincoln, Vermont
Christopher Aram Bohjalian, who goes by the pen name Chris Bohjalian, is an American novelist. Bohjalian is the author of 15 novels, including New York Times bestsellers Midwives, Secrets of Eden, The Law of Similars, Before You Know Kindness, The Double Bind, Skeletons at the Feast, and The Night Strangers.
Bohjalian is the son of Aram Bohjalian, who was a senior vice president of the New York advertising agency Romann & Tannenholz. Chris Bohjalian graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College, where he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. In the mid-1980s, he worked as an account representative for J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in New York.
He and his wife lived in a co-op in Brooklyn until March 1986, when the two were riding in a taxicab in which the driver refused to let them out of the car for 45 minutes, ignoring all traffic lights and stop signs. Around midnight, the driver dropped them off at a near-deserted street in front of a crack house, where the police were conducting a raid and Bohjalian and his wife were forced to drop to the ground for their protection. The incident prompted the couple to move from Brooklyn; Bohjalian said, "After it was all over, we just thought, "Why do we live here?" A few days later, the couple read an ad in The New York Times referencing the "People's Republic of Vermont," and in 1987 the couple moved to Lincoln, Vermont.
Early career
After buying their house, Bohjalian began writing weekly columns for local newspaper and magazine about living in the small town, which had a population of about 975 residents. The Concord Monitor said of Bohjalian during this period, "his immersion in community life and family, Vermont-style, has allowed him to develop into a novelist with an ear and empathy for the common man." Bohjalian continued the column for about 12 years, writing about such topics as his own daily life, fatherhood and the transformation of America. The column has run in the Burlington Free Press since 1992. Bohjalian has also written for such magazines as Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine.
Bohjalian's first novel, A Killing in the Real World, was released in 1988. Almost two decades after it was released, Bohjalian said of the book, "It was a train wreck. I hadn't figured things out yet." His third novel, Past the Bleachers, was released in 1992 and adapted as a Hallmark Channel television movie in 1995.
In 1998, Bohjalian wrote his fifth book, Midwives, a novel focusing on rural Vermont midwife Sibyl Danforth, who becomes embroiled in a legal battle after one of her patients died following an emergency Caesarean section. The novel was critically acclaimed and was selected by Oprah Winfrey as the October 1998 selection of her Oprah's Book Club, which helped push the book to great financial success. It became a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. Victoria Blewer has often described her husband as having "a crush" on the Sybil Danforth character. In 2001, the novel was adapted into a Lifetime Movie Network television film starring Sissy Spacek in the lead role. Spacek said the Danforth character appealed to her because "the heart of the story is my character's inner struggle with self-doubt, the solo road you travel when you have a secret."
Later career
Bohjalian followed Midwives with the 1999 novel The Law of Similars, about a widower attorney suffering from nameless anxieties who starts dating a woman who practices alternative medicine. The novel was inspired by Bohjalian's real-life visit to a homeopath in an attempt to cure frequent colds he was catching from his daughter's day care center. Bohjalian said of the visit, "I don't think I imagined there was a novel in homeopathy, however, until I met the homeopath and she explained to me the protocols of healing. There was a poetry to the language that a patient doesn't hear when visiting a conventional doctor." The protagonist, a father, is based in part on Bohjalian himself, and his four-year-old daughter is based largely on Bohjalian's daughter, who was three when he was writing the book., Liz Rosenberg of The New York Times said the novel shared many similarities with Midwives but that it paled in comparison; Rosenberg said, "Unlike its predecessor, it fails to take advantage of Bohjalian's great gift for creating thoughtful fiction featuring characters in whom the reader sustains a lively interest." Megan Harlan of The Boston Phoenix described it as "formulaic fiction" and said Bohjalian focused too much on creating a complex plot and not enough of complex characterizations. The Law of Similars, like Midwives, made the New York Times bestsellers list.
He won the New England Book Award in 2002, and in 2007 released "The Double Bind," a novel based on Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.
In 2008, Bohjalian released Skeletons at the Feast, a love story set in the last six months of World War II in Poland and Germany. The novel was inspired by an unpublished diary written by German citizen Eva Henatsch from 1920 to 1945. The diary was given to Bohjalian in 1998 by Henatsch's grandson Gerd Krahn, a friend of Bohjalian, who had a daughter in the same kindergarten class as Bohjalian's daughter. Bohjalian was particularly fascinated by Henatsch's account of her family's trek west ahead of the Soviet Army, but he was not inspired to write a novel from it until 2006, when he read Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, Max Hastings' history of the final years of World War II. Bohjalian was struck not only by how often Henatsch's story mirrored real-life experiences, but also the common "moments of idiosyncratic human connection" found in both. Skeletons of the Feast was considered a departure for Bohjalian because it was not only set outside of Vermont, but set in a particular historical moment.
His 2010 novel, Secrets of Eden, was also a critical success, receiving starred reviews from three of the four trade journals (Booklist, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly), as well as many newspapers and magazines. It debuted at # 6 on The New York Times bestseller list.
His next novel, The Night Strangers, published in 2011, represents yet another departure for Bohjalian. The is both a gothic ghost story and a taut psychological thriller.
He has written a weekly column for Gannett's Burlington Free Press since February 1992 called "Idyll Banter." His 1,000th column appeared in May 2011.
Personal comments
In a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview, Bohjalian offered up these personal comments:
I was the heaviest child, by far, in my second-grade class. My mother had to buy my pants for me at a store called the "Husky Boys Shop," and still she had to hem the cuffs up around my knees. I hope this experience, traumatizing as it was, made me at least marginally more sensitive to people around me.
I have a friend with Down syndrome, a teenage boy who is capable of remembering the librettos from entire musicals the first or second time he hears them. The two of us belt them out together whenever we're driving anywhere in a car.I am a pretty avid bicyclist. The other day I was biking alone on a thin path in the woods near Franconia Notch, New Hampshire, and suddenly before me I saw three bears. At first I saw only two, and initially I thought they were cats. Then I thought they were dogs. Finally, just as I was approaching them and they started to scurry off the path and into the thick brush, I understood they were bears. Bear cubs, to be precise. Which is exactly when their mother, no more than five or six feet to my left, reared up on her hind legs, her very furry paws and very sharp claws raised above her head in a gesture that an optimist might consider a wave and guy on a bike might consider something a tad more threatening. Because she was standing on a slight incline, I was eye level with her stomach—an eventual destination that seemed frighteningly plausible. I have never biked so fast in my life in the woods. I may never have biked so fast in my life on a paved road.
I do have hobbies—I garden and bike, for example—but there's nothing in the world that gives me even a fraction of the pleasure that I derive from hanging around with my wife and daughter.
He lives with his wife and daughter in Lincoln, Vermont, where he is active in the local church and the Vermont theater community—always off-stage, never on.
Writing style
Bohjalian novels often focus on a specific issue, such as homelessness, animal rights and environmentalism, and tend to be character-driven, revolving around complex and flawed protagonists and secondary characters. Bohjalian uses characteristics from his real life in his writings; in particular, many of his novels take place in fictional Vermont towns, and the names of real New Hampshire towns are often used throughout his stories. Bohjalian said, "Writers can talk with agonizing hubris about finding their voices, but for me, it was in Vermont that I discovered issues, things that matter to me." His novels also tend to center around ordinary people facing extraordinarily difficult situations resulting from unforeseen circumstances, often triggered by other parties. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
A chilling and heartbreaking suspense novel for readers who like the poetry of Emily Dickinson.... Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is ambitious and poignant thanks to the voice of its teen narrator.... It’s a novel about survival and the power of literature and poetry.
Bob Minzesheimer - USA Today
Bohjalian delivers a thoroughly engrossing and poignant coming-of-age story set against a nightmarish backdrop as real as yesterday's headlines from Fukushima and Chernobyl. And in Emily he's created a remarkable and complicated teenager, a passionate, intelligent girl equally capable of cutting herself with a razor blade and quoting Emily Dickinson, then explaining it all to us in a wry, honest voice as distinctive as Holden Caulfield's.
Ann Levin - Associated Press
Heartbreaking....scrupulously realistic....Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is a novel for adults...but readers of any age who love John Green’s novels might also find Shepard’s story, sobering as it is, an awesome one.
Jim Higgins - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
A "must read’ book.... [A] brilliant story of a young woman living an unexpected life, making difficult decisions and dealing with an ugly aftermath.
Amanda St. Amand - St. Louis Post Dispatch
A masterful storyteller...Bohjalian hits every note. His characters have depth, his story sings. It’s a book that works well for either teens or adults.
Beth Colvin - New Orleans Advocate
Bohjalian’s inventive latest imagines a nuclear meltdown in Vermont. Sixteen-year-old Emily loses her father—the plant’s chief engineer—in the accident, and she flees the town to escape its vitriol. Though she ends up homeless, she never gives up on home. Emily’s voice is droll, her journey enthralling and indelible (Best New Books).
People Magazine
Bohjalian’s impressive 16th novel charts the life of a teenage girl after a nuclear disaste.... Through her first-person narration, readers become intimately familiar with Emily.... Her admiration for kindred spirit Emily Dickinson serves to humanize her plight, as does an epiphany in the books’ bittersweet conclusion.
Publishers Weekly
Emily Shepard is hiding out in a shelter made of ice and trash bags after a nightmarish meltdown at a nuclear plant in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom.... More heartfelt, engaged work from relentlessly best-selling, best-book author Bohjalian, and how can you not love a heroine who identifies with Emily Dickinson?
Library Journal
Bohjalian once again reveals an uncanny talent for crafting a young female protagonist who is fatally flawed, but nevertheless immensely likable...resonates with a message of hope, truth and the fragility of life. —Karen Ann Cullotta
Bookpage
The versatile Bohjalian has Emily tell her harrowing, tragic story retrospectively, under medical care. If only this well-meant and compelling tale offered more scenes depicting the shocking aftermath of a nuclear disaster to provide an even more arresting and significant context for traumatized yet tough and resilient young Emily’s sad, brave saga. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
After a nuclear meltdown, a Vermont teen flees to the mean streets of Burlington.... Readers hoping for a futuristic novel imagining the aftermath of a Fukushima-type disaster in the United States may be disappointed—Bohjalian’s primary focus is on examining, in wrenching detail, the dystopia wrought by today’s economy. Emily’s voice is a compelling one, however, and hers is a journey readers will avidly follow
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
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