The O'Conner Girls


Book Description

THE STORY: The O'Conner story takes place in 1997 in Minnesota over the Christmas holiday. Tom O'Conner has passed away, and his wife (Sarah) and children (Liz, Martha and Matt) have reunited to excavate his mountain of personal effects. As the fam




Jailbait


Book Description

THE STORY: Through the course of one dizzying night at a club, JAILBAIT follows the parallel stories of two fifteen-year-old girls, desperate to grow up, and two thirty-something men who are looking to be twenty-one again. High-school sophomores Cl




Redemption Falls


Book Description

1865. The Civil War is ending. Eighteen years after the Irish famine-ship Star of the Sea docked at New York, a daughter of its journey, Eliza Duane Mooney, sets out on foot from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, crossing a ravaged continent on a quest. Eliza is searching for a young boy she has not seen in four years, one of the hundred thousand children drawn into the war. His fate has been mysterious and will prove extraordinary. It is a walk that will have consequences for many seemingly unconnected survivors: the stunning intellectual Lucia-Cruz McLelland, who deserts New York City to cast her fate with mercurial hero James Con O'Keeffe -- convict, revolutionary, governor of the desolate Western township of Redemption Falls; rebel guerilla Cole McLaurenson, who fuels his own gruesome Westward mission with the blind rage of an outlaw; runaway slave Elizabeth Longstreet, who turns resentment into grace in a Western wilderness where nothing is as it seems. O'Keeffe's career has seen astonishing highs and lows. Condemned to death in 1848 for plotting an insurrection against British rule in Ireland, his sentence was commuted to life transportation to Van Diemen's Land, Tasmania. From there he escaped, abandoning a woman he loved, and was shipwrecked in the Pacific before making his way to the teeming city of New York. A spellbinding orator, he has been hailed a hero by Irish New Yorkers, refugees from the famine that has ravaged their homeland. His public appearances are thronged to the rafters and his story has brought him fame. He has married the daughter of a wealthy Manhattan family, but their marriage is haunted by a past full of secrets. The terrors of Civil War have shaken his every belief. Now alone in the west, he yearns for new beginnings. Redemption Falls is a Dickensian tale of war and forgiveness, of strangers in a strange land, of love put to the ultimate test. Packed with music, balladry, poetry, and storytelling, this is "a vivid mosaic of a vast country driven wild by war" (Irish Independent), containing "moments of sustained brilliance which in psychological truth and realism make Daniel Defoe look like a literary amateur" (Sunday Tribune). With this riveting historical novel of urgent contemporary resonance, the author of the bestselling Star of the Sea now brings us a modern masterpiece.




Evidence of V


Book Description

"In an ambitious blend of fact and fiction, including family secrets, documents from the era, and a thin, fragmentary case file unsealed by the court, novelist Sheila O'Connor tells the riveting story of V, a talented fifteen-year-old singer in 1930s Minneapolis who aspires to be a star. Drawing on the little-known American practice of incarcerating adolescent girls for "immorality" in the first half of the twentieth century, O'Connor follows young V from her early work as a nightclub entertainer to her subsequent six-year state school sentence for an unplanned pregnancy. As V struggles to survive within a system only nominally committed to rescue and reform, she endures injustices that will change the course of her life and the lives of her descendants. Inspired by O'Connor's research on her unknown maternal grandmother and the long-term effects of intergenerational trauma, Evidence of V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts, and Fictions is a poignant excavation of familial and national history that remains disturbingly relevant-a harrowing story of exploitation and erasure, and the infinite ways in which girls, past and present, are punished for crimes they didn't commit. O'Connor's collage novel offers an engaging balance between illuminating a shameful and hidden chapter of American history and captivating the reader with the vivid and unforgettable character of V."--




I Am


Book Description

A child is robbed of the right to remain innocent when she is sexually abused at an age children should only experience laughter and cartoons. At the age when children should be developing trust tendencies and feelings of security from those closest to them, this young child was being molded into deceit and sexual immortality. Fearful, she never reveals the tragic event and is unknowingly forced into an abyss of demonic forces designated to restrict her from reaching her destiny. Life becomes more complicated as she ages, living out the destructive path that is paved before her. They say life is about choices, but what happens when life makes a decision for you? How do you regain authority over the things that were granted to you from the makings of heaven and earth? How do you become who you were created to be when you have no knowledge of who you are? This child has to figure it out or life will become obsolete before its meaning can be revealed. She fights through a life of sex, lies, deceit, heartbreak, and tragedy. Yet the question is, who will win the fight? Cover art made by: Sherelle Speed aka Artdoll




Reconsidering Flannery O'Connor


Book Description

Contributions by Lindsay Alexander, Alison Arant, Alicia Matheny Beeson, Eric Bennett, Gina Caison, Jordan Cofer, Doug Davis, Doreen Fowler, Marshall Bruce Gentry, Bruce Henderson, Monica C. Miller, William Murray, Carol Shloss, Alison Staudinger, and Rachel Watson The National Endowment for the Humanities has funded two Summer Institutes titled "Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor," which invited scholars to rethink approaches to Flannery O’Connor’s work. Drawing largely on research that started as part of the 2014 NEH Institute, this collection shares its title and its mission. Featuring fourteen new essays, Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor disrupts a few commonplace assumptions of O’Connor studies while also circling back to some old questions that are due for new attention. The volume opens with “New Methodologies,” which features theoretical approaches not typically associated with O’Connor’s fiction in order to gain new insights into her work. The second section, “New Contexts,” stretches expectations on literary genre, on popular archetypes in her stories, and on how we should interpret her work. The third section, lovingly called “Strange Bedfellows,” puts O’Connor in dialogue with overlooked or neglected conversation partners, while the final section, “O’Connor’s Legacy,” reconsiders her personal views on creative writing and her wishes regarding the handling of her estate upon death. With these final essays, the collection comes full circle, attesting to the hazards that come from overly relying on O’Connor’s interpretation of her own work but also from ignoring her views and desires. Through these reconsiderations, some of which draw on previously unpublished archival material, the collection attests to and promotes the vitality of scholarship on Flannery O’Connor.




The Best of Frank O'Connor


Book Description

The most generous one-volume collection ever published of short stories, autobiographical writings,poetry, and essays by the writer Yeats called “Ireland’s Chekhov.” Selected and arranged thematically by Julian Barnes, the rich mix of writings in The Best of Frank O’Connor starts off with his most famous short story, “Guests of the Nation,” set during the Irish War of Independence; chronicles his childhood with an alcoholic father and protective mother; and traces his literary influences in brilliant essays on Joyce and Yeats. O’Connor’s wonderfully polyphonic tales of family, friendship, and rivalry are set beside those that bring to life forgotten souls on the fringes of society. O’Connor’s writings about Ireland vividly evoke the land he called home, while other stories probe the hardships and rewards of Irish emigration. Finally, we see O’Connor grappling, in both fiction and memoir, with the largest questions of religion and belief. The Best of Frank O’Connor is a literary monument to a truly great writer.




Revising Flannery O'Connor


Book Description

"In Revising Flannery O'Connor, Katherine Hemple Prown addresses the conflicts O'Connor experienced as a "southern lady" and professional author. Placing gender at the center of her analytical framework, Prown considers the reasons for feminist critical negelct of the writer and traces the cultural origins of the complicated aesthetic that informs O'Connor's fiction, but published and unpublished.".




Flannery O'Connor


Book Description

In her biography of writer Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964, née Mary Flannery), Mary Carpenter introduces young readers to one of the most renowned American authors. With an accessible style of writing, Flannery O’Connor gives younger readers an overview of O’Connor’s life and examines the influences, such as her family, region, and education, that helped her become one of the most respected fiction writers of the twentieth century. In a frank but age-appropriate manner, Carpenter discusses the writer’s rural southern upbringing, her relationship to race, her chronic lupus, and her Catholic faith. The book will appeal to younger (nine- to ten-year-old) readers with sophisticated interests along with, and maybe more importantly, those older middle-school students who are not yet skillful readers and who thus often search with difficulty for interesting topics presented in books of a shorter length than most written for that age group. Mary Flannery’s life is inspirational. Her childhood in Savannah, Georgia, was both difficult and privileged. During the Great Depression, her father had to leave home to find work and then became very ill. Later in small-town Milledgeville, Georgia, Flannery lived with her mother and an extended family of strong women. Flannery’s ability to know her mind at an early age helped her build an artistic reputation starting in high school. Through her fiction, she went on to become a role model for unconventional girls everywhere and for anyone who dreams of becoming a writer.




The Bitch Posse


Book Description

These are the confessions of the Bitch Posse. Cherry, Rennie, and Amy were outcasts, rebels, and dreamers. And their friendship was so all-encompassing that some would call it dangerous. This is the story of three women-as seniors in high school and as women in their mid-thirties---who formed a bond in order to survive the pitfalls and perils of their lives. In the present day, one of them is a wife and mother-to-be, trying to live a "normal" life. One of them is a writer who engages in a number of self-destructive relationships. And one of them is in a mental hospital---and has been ever since that one fateful night fifteen years ago, when a heart-wrenching betrayal and the unraveling of relationships led them to a point of no return, where their actions triggered unimaginable consequences. These secrets have torn them apart while inextricably binding them to one another. What happened to them? And can they survive their shared history, even today? The Bitch Posse is an anthem for friendships that defy society's approval or disapproval. It's a novel of secrets, courage, sacrifice, and hope against the odds. It is both a journey back to being a girl on the verge of adulthood, and a journey forward, showing how the events of our past can unearth the best in us today. Dare to jump in. "The Bitch Posse is a riveting and emotionally charged read. No fluff here." --Chicago Tribune