Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend
Matthew Dicks, 2012
St. Martin's Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250031853
Summary
I am not imaginary...
Budo is lucky as imaginary friends go. He's been alive for more than five years, which is positively ancient in the world of imaginary friends. But Budo feels his age and thinks constantly of the day when eight-year-old Max Delaney will stop believing in him. When that happens, Budo will disappear.
Max is different from other children. Some people say he has Asperger’s, but most just say he’s “on the spectrum.” None of this matters to Budo, who loves Max unconditionally and is charged with protecting him from the class bully, from awkward situations in the cafeteria, and even in the bathroom stalls. But he can’t protect Max from Mrs. Patterson, a teacher in the Learning Center who believes that she alone is qualified to care for this young boy.
When Mrs. Patterson does the unthinkable, it is up to Budo and a team of imaginary friends to save Max—and Budo must ultimately decide which is more important: Max’s happiness or his own existence.
Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend is a triumph of courage and imagination that touches on the truths of life, love, and friendship as it races to a heartwarming...and heartbreaking conclusion. (From the publisher.)
Read an excerpt.
Visit Matthew on Facebook
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Blackstone, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—Manchester Community College;
Trinity College; St. Joseph's College
• Currently—lives in Newington, Connecticut
Matthew Dicks is the author of the novels Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, Something Missing and Unexpectedly, Milo and the rock opera The Clowns. When he is not hunched over a computer screen, he fills his days as an elementary school teacher, a wedding DJ, a storyteller and a life coach. He is a former West Hartford Teacher of the Year and a three-time Moth StorySLAM champion.
Matthew is married to friend and fellow teacher, Elysha, and they have a daughter named Clara and a son named Charlie. Matthew grew up in the small town of Blackstone, Massachusetts, where he made a name for himself by dying twice before the age of eighteen and becoming the first student in his high school to be suspended for inciting riot upon himself.
In his words
My name is Matthew Dicks. I am an author, a storyteller and a teacher.
In the spring of 2008, under the guidance of my agent, Taryn Fagerness, I sold my first novel, Something Missing, to Broadway Books, an imprint of Doubleday, and thus made one of my childhood dreams come true. Something Missing was published in August of 2009 and has since been translated into six different languages.
My career as an author was born.
One year later, in the fall of 2010, I published my second novel, Unexpectedly, Milo. It has been translated into three languages.
My third novel, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, published in the United States in August of 2012 with St. Martin’s Press. It has been translated into 17 languages worldwide.
At the request of my UK publisher, I am published under the name Matthew Green in the UK and its affiliated markets. Green is my wife’s maiden name.
In addition to novels, I’ve also written a rock opera, The Clowns, and am working on a memoir and several children’s books. In addition to fiction, I write poetry, essays and a daily blog. I have published pieces in newspapers, poetry journals, online news sites and educational journals throughout the United States.
In addition to writing, I am also a storyteller. I tell stories for The Moth on a regular basis and am a three-time Moth Story Slam champion. I also tell stories for a variety of storytelling organizations including The Story Collider and Literary Death Match. My wife and I also host out own storytelling series in Connecticut called Speak Up! In addition to storytelling, I also occasionally work as a public speaker, addressing issues related to publishing, writing, education, productivity and more.
I grew up in the small town of Blackstone, Massachusetts with two siblings, two lost-but-recently-found step-siblings, a loving mother, and an evil step-father. I was a Boy Scout, a pole-vaulter, a flutist and bassoonist, and a proud member of my school’s drum corps. I also have the distinction of having died twice by the age of eighteen before being revived by paramedics both times.
Sorry. No white light.
I left home at eighteen and worked in a variety of dead-end jobs for the next five years until I was robbed at gunpoint at the age of twenty-three. This brush with death finally convinced me to get off my ass and make something of my life.
Six months later, I was sitting in my first college classroom (a class ironically called On Death and Dying), hoping to one day become a teacher and an author. I would often tell friends and family that my goal was to one day write for a living and teaching for pleasure. While I have not yet realized this goal, I am closer than I would have ever imagined.
I worked my way through college, managing McDonald’s restaurants, opening a small business, and working on campus as a writing tutor. I graduated from Manchester Community College with a liberal arts degree in 1996 and Trinity College with an English degree and Saint Joseph’s College with a teaching degree in 1999.
Following graduation, I went to work as an elementary school teacher and have been teaching ever since. I currently teach fifth grade but have taught second and third grade as well. In 2005 I was named West Hartford’s Teacher of the Year and was a finalist for Connecticut’s Teacher of the Year.
Extras
• In addition to my teaching career, I also own and operate a DJ company that performs weddings throughout Connecticut. I also serve as an occasional, albeit fairly heathen, minister and a life coach.
• In 2006 I married my wife and colleague, Elysha, after proposing to her in front of friends and family on the main landing of Grand Central Station in New York. We live in Newington, CT with our daughter, Clara, our son, Charlie, our Lhasa Apso, Kaleigh, and our enormous, slightly insane house cat named Owen.
• When not teaching, writing or playing with my children, I spend my free time listening to music, eating poorly and dodging phone calls.
• I’m an avid, albeit awful, golfer and a much better basketball and poker player. I am an enormous fan of the New England Patriots and a season ticket holder and an equally rabid fan of the Yankees, Celtics and Bruins.
• I would play more football if my fragile friends were more willing.
• I also read a great deal, consume an enormous number of audio books, and listen to about three dozen podcasts on a daily and weekly basis.
• I also run a occasionally-annual race throughout Connecticut modeled after CBS’s The Amazing Race called The A-Mattzing Race, and this keeps me busy planning and coordinating the next event. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[A] fun read and engaging exploration of the vibrant world of a child's imagination.
Publishers Weekly
Funny, poignant.... Budo's world is as realistic as he is imaginary. We would all be lucky to have Budo at our sides. Reading his memoir is the next best thing.
Library Journal
An incredibly captivating novel about the wonder of youth and the importance of friendship, whether real or imagined. Delightfully compelling reading.
Booklist
Quirky and heartwarming
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. “I am not imaginary,” says Budo. Do you believe him?
2. Might you relate differently to Max if the story was told from another character’s point of view? How does Budo’s voice shape your understanding of Max?
3. Max’s mother wants desperately to understand what is wrong with Max, while his father wants desperately to believe that there is nothing wrong. Who do you side with?
4. Budo seems to watch a lot of television. How do his viewing habits shape his perception of the world?
5. Budo straddles many worlds: child and adult; real and imaginary. Could the same be said for other characters in this book?
6. Mrs. Patterson did a terrible thing. But is there any way in which her actions may have been beneficial to Max?
7. What does Budo fear most? Why does he think that Max’s mom and dad are his biggest danger?
8. The author, Matthew Dicks, is an elementary school teacher. In what ways can you see the influence of this “day job” on his writing?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
A Land More Kind Than Home
Wiley Cash, 2012
HarperCollns
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062088239
Summary
For a curious boy like Jess Hall, growing up in Marshall means trouble when you get caught spying on grown-ups.
Adventurous and precocious, Jess is protective of his older brother, Christopher, a mute whom everyone calls Stump. Though their mother has warned them not to snoop, Stump can't help sneaking a look at something he's not supposed to—an act that will have repercussions. It's a wrenching event that thrusts Jess into an adulthood for which he's not prepared.
He now knows that a new understanding can bring not only danger and evil—but also the possibility of freedom and deliverance.
Told by resonant and evocative characters, A Land More Kind Than Home is a haunting tale of courage in the face of cruelty and the power of love to overcome the darkness that lives in us all. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1977-78
• Where—Gastonia, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., M.A., University of North Carolina;
Ph.D., University of Louisiana
• Currently—lives in Wilmington, North Carolina
Wiley Cash is from western North Carolina, a region that figures prominently in his fiction. A Land More Than Home, his first novel was published in 2012, followed by This Dark Road to Mercy in 2014.
Wiley holds a B.A. in Literature from the University of North Carolina-Asheville, an M.A. in English from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette (where he studied under author Ernest Gaines).
He has received grants and fellowships from the Asheville Area Arts Council, the Thomas Wolfe Society, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. His stories have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Roanoke Review and Carolina Quarterly, and his essays on Southern literature have appeared in American Literary Realism, South Carolina Review, and other publications.
Wiley lives with his wife and two daughters in Wilmington, North Carolina. He serves as the writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina-Asheville and teaches in the Mountainview Low-Residency MFA. (Adapted from previous and current bios on the author's website. Retrieved 10/4/2017.)
Book Reviews
Nine-year-old Jess Hall [is] one of the narrators of Wiley Cash's mesmerizing first novel…and it's his voice that we carry away from this intensely felt and beautifully told story.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times
Mesmerizing...only Jess knows why his autistic older brother died on the very day he was taken into the church, and it’s his voice that we carry away from this intensely felt and beautifully told story.
New York Times Book Review
[C]ompelling…Like his fellow North Carolinian Ron Rash, Cash adeptly captures the rhythms of Appalachian speech…The story has elements of a thriller, but Cash is ultimately interested in how unscrupulous individuals can bend decent people to their own dark ends, often by invoking the name of God.
Steve Yarbrough—The Washington Post
Wiley Cash’s novel embeds a tender coming-of-age story within a suspense-filled thriller.... [A] clear-sighted, graceful debut.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So beautifully written that you’ll be torn about how fast to read it. This is great, gothic Southern fiction.
NPR
Absorbing.... Cash uses well-placed flashbacks to flesh out his characters...and to illuminate a familiar truth of Southern lit: Many are the ways that fathers fail their sons.
Entertainment Weekly
A lyrical, poignant debut.... In the mode of John Hart, Tom Franklin, and early Pat Conroy, A Land More Kind Than Home explores the power of forgiveness [and] the strength of family bonds.
Florida Sun-Sentinel
A Land More Kind Than Home is a powerfully moving debut that reads as if Cormac McCarthy decided to rewrite Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Good old-fashioned storytelling.... With murder, religion, infidelity, domestic abuse, guns, whiskey and snake handling, Land is rich in unstable relationships and beautiful tragedy.
Ploughshares
Cash’s debut about a town gripped by a menacing preacher has the timeless qualities of the Old Testament...[a] very good book.
Daily Beast
Cash’s debut novel is a chilling descent into the world of religious frenzy in small town North Carolina. At the core of the book is a mysterious and demonic pastor, Carson Chambliss, an ex-con and born-again believer who uses snakes and poison to prove God’s love: he seduces the town with raucous church meetings where they dance, heal, and speak in tongues until one Sunday a mute child dies during evening service.... [T]he book is compelling, with an elegant structure and a keen eye for detail, matched with compassionate attention to character. The languid atmosphere seduces, and Cash’s fine first effort pulls the reader into a shadowy, tormented world where wolves prowl in the guise of sheep. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Associates.
Publishers Weekly
As lyrical, beautiful, and uncomplicated as the classic ballads of Appalachia, Cash's first novel is a tragic story of misplaced faith and love gone wrong.... [A]n autistic child becomes the victim of a special healing service, and the local sheriff launches an investigation. Told in three voices...the tragedy unfolds and compounds upon itself as the backgrounds of the major players are revealed and each reacts as conscience and faith demand. Verdict: ...Cash captures the reader's imagination...and maintains the wonder of the tale through to the coda of faith and affirmation. —Thomas Kilpatrick, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale
Library Journal
Up beyond Asheville, near where Gunter Mountain falls into Tennessee, evil has come to preach in a house of worship where venomous snakes and other poisons are sacraments. Cash's debut novel explores Faulkner-O'Connor country, a place where folks endure a hard life by clinging to God's truths echoing from hardscrabble churches.... As lean and spare as a mountain ballad, Cash's novel resonates perfectly, so much so that it could easily have been expanded to epic proportions. An evocative work about love, fate and redemption.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Think about the epigraph the author chose to open the book and from which the novel's title derives. What is the significance of this particular quote? How does it set the novel's tone and mood? Explain what the title—"a land more kind than home"—signifies.
2. The novel is told from three characters' perspectives. How does this add to the story and deepen it as it unfolds? How might it be different if it had been told from only one of the character's point of view?
3. Talk about Carson Chambliss. Describe his character. Why does he have such a magnetic hold on his congregation, and especially on Julie? Is Julie a good mother? Can you understand why she behaved the way she did? Do you think she understood the truth of her son, Stump's fate? Why is Addie so afraid of him?
4. How might the events of the story have unfolded differently if Jess had told his mother the truth about what she heard at the Sunday afternoon service?
5. Describe this small North Carolina town in which the story takes place. What is it like? How does its size and remoteness influence the lives of those who call it home? Sheriff Clem Barfield is not native to Madison County. How does this impact the way he sees this place and its people?
6. How can religion uplift a person's soul? How can it be corrupting influence? Julie considers herself to be a "good Christian woman." What do you think? Whether you are Christian or not, religious or not, what is your definition of a "good Christian?" Is anyone in the novel virtuous, and if so, in what way?
7. Why did Addie pull the children out of Chambliss's services? Did she have any other options?
8. When Jess asks his grandpa if Stump will be able to talk in heaven, Jimmy tells him, "Of course he will. We'll all be able to talk. And we'll be able to understand each other." What does his answer reveal about him and the world? What is he trying to teach Jess?
9. Think about Jimmy Hall. What kind of relationship does she have with his son? What about with Sheriff Barefield?
10. Can this novel be compared to a Shakespearean tragedy? If so, in what ways? Think about various stories and proverbs from the Bible. How are they reflected in the story?
11. What role does nature and the natural world play in the novel?
12. Addie believes that this place and its people will be saved in the wake of tragedy. Do you believe in salvation? What role does forgiveness play in this story? Do you think people can change for the better? What about Jimmy Hall? How do the novel's events impact his relationship with the sheriff and with his grandson, Jess?
13. Think about the novel's themes: revenge, faith, betrayal, goodness and evil, forgiveness and understanding. Choose a character and show how these themes are demonstrated through his or her life.
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Saturday Night Widows: The Adventures of Six Friends Remaking Their Lives
Becky Aikman, 2013
Crown Publishing
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307590435
Summary
In her forties—a widow, too young, too modern to accept the role—Becky Aikman struggled to make sense of her place in an altered world.
In this transcendent and infectiously wise memoir, she explores surprising new discoveries about how people experience grief and transcend loss and, following her own remarriage, forms a group with five other young widows to test these unconventional ideas. Together, these friends summon the humor, resilience, and striving spirit essential for anyone overcoming adversity.
Meet the Saturday Night Widows: ringleader Becky, an unsentimental journalist who lost her husband to cancer; Tara, a polished mother of two, whose husband died in the throes of alcoholism after she filed for divorce; Denise, a widow of just five months, now struggling to get by; Marcia, a hard-driving corporate lawyer; Dawn, an alluring self-made entrepreneur whose husband was killed in a sporting accident, leaving two small children behind; and Lesley, a housewife who returned home one day to find that her husband had committed suicide.
The women meet once a month, and over the course of a year, they strike out on ever more far-flung adventures, learning to live past the worst thing they thought could happen. They share emotional peaks and valleys – dating, parenting, moving, finding meaningful work, and reinventing themselves – while turning traditional thinking about loss and recovery upside down.
Through it all runs the story of Aikman's own journey through grief and her love affair with a man who tempts her to marry again. In a transporting story of what friends can achieve when they hold each other up, Saturday Night Widows is a rare book that will make you laugh, think, and remind yourself that despite the utter unpredictability and occasional tragedy of life, it is also precious, fragile, and often more joyous than we recognize. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1954-55
• Raised—Brookville, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Bucknell College;
M.A. Columbia University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
A graduate of the School of Journalism at Columbia University, former reporter for Newsday and writer and editor at Buisness Week. She formed the Saturday Night Widows with five other women who lost their husbands at a young age. They set out to reinvent themselves through friendship, laughter and shared adventure. Becky currently lives in New York City. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Their stories of loss are touching, and the wisdom they gain is a testament to the durability of the human spirit.
People
[Aikman] and five other young widows reenter the world of the living, laughing, and – gulp – dating, all the while sharing frank talk, insight, and hope from the trenches.
Good Housekeeping
Often desperate, sometimes feisty, partly hilarious, and warm as a fleecy blanket, Saturday Night Widows is a surprisingly feel-good, girl-bonding, which-role-will-Meryl-Streep-play-in-the-movie kind of a book. And I loved it….It’s sad, it’s happy, and, in fact, once you start Saturday Night Widows, you won’t be able to part with it.
Terri Schlichenmeyer - Independent News
Hoping to shatter the myth of the widow as a black-clad elderly lady of perpetual sorrows, New York Newsday reporter Aikman resolved to organize her own group of “renegade widows” and record their spirited monthly meetings as an unscientific grief study framed within her cautious memoir of having lost her own husband.... All the women had complicated stories of their husbands’ death, feelings of guilt and insecurity, and more or less healthy libidos. Indeed, dating and finding new partners prove the leitmotif, especially for the author, who had remarried a year before she even organized the group. As a result, the work feels stifled and lacking emotional drive, resulting in a kind of detached, academic tome.
Publishers Weekly
Compelling…. Along with the stories of six remarkably resilient and admirable women (ranging from an entrepreneur to a housewife), the book offers an arresting analysis of the literature of grief…. A compassionate, inspirational and deeply personal read, Saturday Night Widows is relevant for a wider audience than the grieving. This book is for anyone who has faced adversity but refuses to let it define them.
BookPage
(Starred review.) Aikman tells this life-affirming tale with compassion and candor.
Booklist
How to cope with tragedy with the help of good friends.... In this debut memoir, Aikman brings together the sad yet optimistic stories of...women, who were widowed at far too early an age...and were ready to take new steps toward a different way of being.... Engaging and entertaining but not maudlin, Aikman shows a side of life that many readers probably don't think about. A compassionate narrative about how one group of friends helped each other thrive after the deaths of their spouses.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. When Becky first convenes her group of “renegade widows,” she worries that they won’t feel a bond because their personalities are so different. Which is more important in forging friendships, similar personalities or shared experiences?
2. Becky and the other Saturday Night Widows hold preconceptions about how they would live after losing their husbands. How do they reconsider those assumptions over the course of the story?
3. How do you think you would proceed if you lost someone close to you? Did your own views change as the story progressed?
4. Becky’s visit to psychological researchers introduces her to the idea that there can be more to grief than sadness and pain. Grief can be a process of finding comfort, she is told. “The process can even bring new insight and new joy.” Are these ideas illustrated in Becky’s journey, and in the journeys of the others in her group?
5. Saturday Night Widows is a true story. What storytelling techniques does Becky use to integrate the narrative of the women’s lives and the material she learned from outside research?
6. “I had been half of a whole,” Becky says of her marriage, “and now, without that other half, I wasn’t certain what was left.” She and the others question their identities now that they are alone. To what extent are we defined by the people we know and love? How would we be different without them?
7. The people the group encounters during the course of the story hold varying views about how widows think, act, and feel. An official from the museum suggests that the group would want to view art that depicts death and dying, while the guide Becky hires presents beautiful images like lotus blossoms because they bloom in the mud. How do you think the various characters formed their attitudes?
8. The group tries to reach some “highly invalid and unscientific conclusions” about how widows and widowers differ by inviting a group of men for an evening. What can the men and women learn from each other?
9. The women in the group often talk about feeling guilty when they make choices to move ahead in their lives. “Should you feel liberated?” Tara asks the group. “That you got a second chance? Or should you feel guilty for the sense of liberation you feel?” What is the role of guilt in their progress? Does guilt serve a purpose in recovery from loss, or is it merely destructive, inhibiting any impulse toward growth or pleasure?
10. Becky’s dream, in which she is choking on a beautiful bee and then sees her departed husband, makes her aware of the value of memory, both painful and joyful. What is the value of finding this balance after someone has died?
11. Widowhood reminds Becky of adolescence, “a time of uncertainty, of transformation, of trying on new identities.” Is this concept frightening? Does it introduce enticing possibilities?
12. The women soon learn that complications—children, careers, habits—make it harder to reinvent themselves at midlife. How do these complications alter the course of each woman’s transformation?
13. “This has made me totally fearless,” says Lesley. “Because the worst thing that could happen has already happened.” Does an awareness of mortality affect the attitudes and decisions of the women in the group?
14. Dawn would like to remarry. “I want my life to be settled!” she says. “No more uncertainty!” Tara resists marriage, saying, “I’m trying to appreciate the lack of knowing.” This tension between seeking certainty and embracing the unknown is present for all the women, not only in matters of love. Which way would you lean?
15. When Becky meets a new man, she explains that she is afraid of involvement. “Maybe I am a coward,” she tells him. “But cowards are safe.” How does falling in love differ for someone experiencing it for the first time versus someone suffering from a devastating loss, whether through death or a broken relationship?
16. Becky takes two trips to places she has never visited before—one on her own, on the water to the Galapagos Islands, and one with the group, through a desert. What contributions do new experiences, including travel, make to her recovery?
17. Would you treat someone who has lost a spouse differently after reading Saturday Night Widows?
18. The book begins with a sad time in the characters’ lives. By the end, how did it make you feel?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Calling Me Home
Julie Kibler, 2013
St. Martin's Press
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250014528
Summary
Calling Me Homeby Julie Kibler is a soaring debut interweaving the story of a heartbreaking, forbidden love in 1930s Kentucky with an unlikely modern-day friendship
Eighty-nine-year-old Isabelle McAllister has a favor to ask her hairdresser Dorrie Curtis. It's a big one. Isabelle wants Dorrie, a black single mom in her thirties, to drop everything to drive her from her home in Arlington, Texas, to a funeral in Cincinnati. With no clear explanation why. Tomorrow.
Dorrie, fleeing problems of her own and curious whether she can unlock the secrets of Isabelle's guarded past, scarcely hesitates before agreeing, not knowing it will be a journey that changes both their lives.
Over the years, Dorrie and Isabelle have developed more than just a business relationship. They are friends. But Dorrie, fretting over the new man in her life and her teenage son’s irresponsible choices, still wonders why Isabelle chose her.
Isabelle confesses that, as a willful teen in 1930s Kentucky, she fell deeply in love with Robert Prewitt, a would-be doctor and the black son of her family's housekeeper—in a town where blacks weren’t allowed after dark. The tale of their forbidden relationship and its tragic consequences makes it clear Dorrie and Isabelle are headed for a gathering of the utmost importance and that the history of Isabelle's first and greatest love just might help Dorrie find her own way. (From the publisher.)
Read an excerpt.
Author Bio
Julie Kibler began writing Calling Me Home after learning a bit of family lore—as a teen, her paternal grandmother fell in love with a young black man, but their families tore them apart. Then, while digging into the past, she discovered her father’s hometown had signs at the city limits warning blacks to be gone by sundown.
Julie grew up in various towns in Kentucky, New Mexico, and Colorado, then moved to Texas to attend college and stayed because even the strangers were friendly. Aside from writing, she is a freelance editor and tries to keep up with her teenagers and a couple of shelter dogs who don't always appreciate their rescue. She enjoys reading, indie films, folk music, photography and splitting chocolatey desserts with her husband, an engineer who doesn't understand writers, but understands chocolate.
She is currently writing her next novel and blogs regularly with five other women writers, all transplants to North Texas, at What Women Write. Her short memoir, "Final Sale on tires," a true story about her relationship with her other grandmother, appeared in Perigee (Issue 21, July 2008). (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Kibler, in alternating first-person narrations, delivers a rousing debut about forbidden love and unexpected friendships over the span of six decades.... [Isabelle,] a woman in her 80s... reveals her former childhood of white privilege in a prejudiced Southern town and her love affair with her maid’s brother, Robert, a black man.... In this compelling tale, Kibler handles decades of race relations with sensitivity and finds a nice balance between the characters.... Drawing from her own family history in Texas, Kibler relays a familiar story in a fresh way.
Publishers Weekly
This is deeply affecting coming-of-age story with radiant characters who will remain with the reader long after the last page is turned.
Romantic Times
In Calling Me Home, Kibler has crafted a wholly original debut.... There’s no denying the pull of Kibler’s story.
Booklist
From East Texas to Cincinnati, from present-day racism to 1930s segregation, Isabelle and Dorrie,...Isabelle's hairdresser for a decade,...have become friends. Yet, when Isabelle asks Dorrie to drive her cross-country... Isabelle's most secret story comes out. Growing up in a town that persecuted blacks...Isabelle was the last young woman the people of Shalerville, Ky., might have expected to fall in love with a black man. The repercussions of their love shattered their lives, their families, their futures.... Kibler's unsentimental eye makes the problems faced unflinchingly by these women ring true. Love and family defy the expected in this engaging tale.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. When Isabelle first grows close to Robert, is her interest in him genuine, or does it have more to do with disobeying her parents and her society’s constraints? How does their relationship change as it grows?
2. What attracts Isabelle to Robert? What attracts Robert to Isabelle? In what ways do they compliment each other?
3. Were there moments during their courtship that you, as a reader, felt that they should not continue their relationship because of the risks?
4. What is the most important thing that Isabelle’s story teaches Dorrie? How does she apply Isabelle’s lessons to her relationship with Teague?
5. How do you feel about Dorrie’s choices in dealing with her son’s troubles?
6. What makes Dorrie and Isabelle’s friendship unique? How did you feel about the way they each reacted to others’ assumptions about them?
7. Do you feel that Calling Me Home accurately portrayed today’s lingering racial injustices and resentments?
8. Do you have any sympathy for Isabelle’s mother? What about for Isabelle’s father?
9. How did you feel when you discovered Robert’s fate? Were you surprised to learn whose funeral Isabelle and Dorrie were attending?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World
Matthew Goodman, 2013
Random House
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345527264
Summary
On November 14, 1889, Nellie Bly, the crusading young female reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s World newspaper, left New York City by steamship on a quest to break the record for the fastest trip around the world. Also departing from New York that day—and heading in the opposite direction by train—was a young journalist from The Cosmopolitan magazine, Elizabeth Bisland. Each woman was determined to outdo Jules Verne’s fictional hero Phileas Fogg and circle the globe in less than eighty days. The dramatic race that ensued would span twenty-eight thousand miles, captivate the nation, and change both competitors’ lives forever.
The two women were a study in contrasts. Nellie Bly was a scrappy, hard-driving, ambitious reporter from Pennsylvania coal country who sought out the most sensational news stories, often going undercover to expose social injustice. Genteel and elegant, Elizabeth Bisland had been born into an aristocratic Southern family, preferred novels and poetry to newspapers, and was widely referred to as the most beautiful woman in metropolitan journalism. Both women, though, were talented writers who had carved out successful careers in the hypercompetitive, male-dominated world of big-city newspapers. Eighty Days brings these trailblazing women to life as they race against time and each other, unaided and alone, ever aware that the slightest delay could mean the difference between victory and defeat.
A vivid real-life re-creation of the race and its aftermath, from its frenzied start to the nail-biting dash at its finish, Eighty Days is history with the heart of a great adventure novel. Here’s the journey that takes us behind the walls of Jules Verne’s Amiens estate, into the back alleys of Hong Kong, onto the grounds of a Ceylon tea plantation, through storm-tossed ocean crossings and mountains blocked by snowdrifts twenty feet deep, and to many more unexpected and exotic locales from London to Yokohama. Along the way, we are treated to fascinating glimpses of everyday life in the late nineteenth century—an era of unprecedented technological advances, newly remade in the image of the steamship, the railroad, and the telegraph. For Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland—two women ahead of their time in every sense of the word—were not only racing around the world. They were also racing through the very heart of the Victorian age. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Matthew Goodman is the author of three books of non-fiction: Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World (2013); The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York 2008); and Jewish Food: The World at Table (2005).
Matthew’s books have been translated into eight languages. His essays, articles, and short stories have appeared in the American Scholar, Harvard Review, Village Voice, Forward, Bon Appetit, and many other publications, and have been cited for Special Mention in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Short Story anthologies.
He has given book talks at venues including the Museum of the City of New York, the Gotham Center for New York History, the National Yiddish Book Center, the Brooklyn Book Festival, and many bookstores and libraries; his radio appearances include NPR’s On the Media, Back Story with the History Guys, and The Splendid Table; The Bob Edwards Show on XM-Sirius Radio; and numerous others.
Matthew has taught creative writing and literature at Vermont College, Tufts University, Emerson College, and at writers’ conferences including the Antioch Writers Workshop and the Chautauqua Institute. He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony (twice) and the Corporation of Yaddo.
He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and two children.
Book Reviews
Two pioneering women hurtle across the globe—and into a changing future—in this stimulating true-life adventure story.... Deftly mixing social history into an absorbing travel epic, Goodman conveys the exuberant dynamism of a very unfusty Victorian era obsessed with speed, power, publicity, and the breaking of every barrier. Photos. (Mar.)
Publishers Weekly
Most of us have heard of Nellie Bly, a reporter for Joseph Pulitzer's World newspaper, who left New York City on November 14, 1889, in a bid to circumnavigate the globe in record-breaking time. Fewer people know that Elizabeth Bisland, who wrote for the Cosmopolitan, left New York on the same day with the same goal in mind. Bly won, but this account covers the journeys of both women—traveling in opposite directions and each, initially, without knowledge of the other. Suspense and fabulous locations; sounds like armchair travel at its best.
Library Journal
A richly detailed double narrative of the adventures of two young women journalists in a race against time, each striving to be the first to travel around the world in 75 days, outdoing the fictional Phileas Fogg's 80 days. Goodman.... Who was the real winner? Goodman's depiction of the swashbuckling Bly, whose self-regard often seemed larger than her regard for the truth, is somewhat less sympathetic than his portrait of the now-forgotten Bisland. The author also examines the shenanigans of the press, the vicissitudes of travel and the global power of the British Empire in the Victorian era. A tad overlong, but entertaining and readable throughout.
Kirkus Reviews
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