"Cascade" by Maryanne O'Hara~ Spectacular, Sparkling Writing!

SUMMARY :

During the 1930s in a small town fighting for its survival, a conflicted new wife seeks to reconcile her artistic ambitions with the binding promises she has made.

Fans of Richard Russo, Amor Towles, Sebastian Barry, and Paula McLain will devour this transporting novel about the eternal tug between our duties and our desires, set during in New York City and New England during the Depression and New Deal eras.            It’s 1935, and Desdemona Hart Spaulding has sacrificed her plans to work as an artist in New York to care for her bankrupt, ailing father in Cascade, Massachusetts. When he dies, Dez finds herself caught in a marriage of convenience, bound to the promise she made to save her father’s Shakespeare Theater, even as her town may be flooded to create a reservoir for Boston. When she falls for artist Jacob Solomon, she sees a chance to escape and realize her New York ambitions, but is it morally possible to set herself free?

A Slate Magazine “Best Books 2012″
A People Magazine “People Pick”
A Library Journal 2012 “Best Bet”
Boston Globe “Best of the New, 2012″
A Massachusetts “Must Read, 2013″


VIDEO TRAILER:

PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK :

Published by:  Penguin Press
Pages:  353  Plus Author's Notes and Reader's Guide
Genre:  Fiction/Historical Fiction
Author:  Maryanne O'Hara
Website:  http://www.maryanneohara.com
Purchase this book:  Barnes & Noble  or Amazon


ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

I have lived on this Massachusetts river for most of my adult life, and I feel lucky to have landed on such a restorative shore at an early age. As a young mother caring for a baby born with a complicated, life-threatening illness (cystic fibrosis), I filled a lot of spiral-bound notebooks with a lot of angst while gazing out at this body of water. By my early thirties, in full-fledged, (and thankfully early) mid-life crisis, I sent myself to the MFA program at Emerson College, where I met many of the wonderful people who have enriched and encouraged my writing life to this day.

In the late 1990s, I began to write and publish short stories, as I’d dreamed of doing during those notebook-filling days. I also spent many years as the Associate Fiction Editor for Ploughshares, the award-winning Boston literary journal. My growing story collection was a finalist for awards like the Iowa Short Fiction Awards and the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Some of the stories were anthologized, and I won some grants in Massachusetts (thank you St. Botolph Club and Massachusetts Cultural Council). With my husband Nick, we focused on being present in each day and giving our daughter the best life we possibly could.

It is so gratifying to see Cascade published, to know that it exists in solid form, that it has a Library of Congress number.

When I’m not writing or reading, I’m either traveling or planning a trip, or I’m in the kitchen trying out a new recipe, planning a party, or I’m in a yoga studio, gym, kayak, or tennis center. Service has always been important to me, and currently, I spend Wednesdays at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, providing Reiki to inpatients.

I’m now working on a novel about an oral historian who comes across an object in a museum exhibit, an object that had been stolen from his family—or so he thought—when he was a boy. Currently, the story alternates between the present day and 1968 Prague, but that may change. What won’t change: the book will be about family secrets and love and betrayal, and about how the cultures we live in both hinder and help us preserve what is most sacred to the artist in all of us.


(This bio. was taken from Ms O'Hara's website  Please go there to see more very interesting things about her and her writing!  http://www.maryanneohara.com )



THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

Utterly devoted to Maryanne O'Hara as a reader now that I've read "Cascade."  She is a writer of the very first order.  Earthy and visceral, her novel is captivatingly "real."  This is a true love story in many ways; its passions having to do not only with human relationships, but also with the inner drives of artistry and nature.  A masterful novel that will be a stand-alone for 2013!

The story is character-driven as so many of our greatest novels are.  The main character, Dez Hart, who makes known the "desires of her heart" is completely open and attainable to us, although not so transparent to those physically around her.  She is so beautifully rendered that she haunted my dreams.  I felt such sympathy for her struggles over the love of her art, her responsibilities, and her personal passions.  I felt the slippery slopes she tred trying not to harm others, while trying to find her own footing.  There was a feverishness about this character that held me in perfect pitch with her.  This is genius in writing and is so rare to find today.

There are many examples of how Ms O'Hara is painterly in her descriptions of the landscape and natural surroundings of Cascade, the community.  Beautifully handled passages that make you want to climb into her novel and find a place to rest.  It's difficult not to fall in love with her father's old Playhouse and the woods and lake of Cascade.  Her descriptions of the artist's process are right on the money.

The other characters that inhabit this book are alive, as well.  Burning with different, individual emotions that particularly set them apart, they are so interesting as studies in human behavior.  And, I felt a sort of fuge hanging over the story with them as they encircled Dez in her efforts to disentangle herself and head in the direction she felt most personally drawn.

This is one of those books you have to read this year!  It's absorbing and written with an artist's hand.  It brings a surprise and a message of intensity.  It's a woman's story, an artist's story, and the story of all who care about the world around them.

It's one of the best!

5 stars               Deborah/TheBookishDame

This review is brought to you in cooperation with Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours where you can find more information and more tours/reviews and interviews on "Cascade."  Please click on this link:  http://hfvirtualbooktours.com


 

Kindle Fire Giveaway!! "Artists and Thieves" by Linda Schroeder

Where there is art, there are thieves. Mai Ling is both. Artist by day, thief by night, she recovers stolen art for Interpol. It's a business, not a passion, until her beloved grandfather reveals a family secret that is also a destiny. He is duty-bound to return to China an especially precious bowl which belonged to his ancestor. Mai must steal it for him. But Mai Ling is not the only one after the bowl. Four others plan to extract the bowl from a private California art collection. The rival thieves grasp and then lose the bowl until finally Mai is faced with the ultimate dilemma: save the bowl or save herself. Her duty to her grandfather gives her only one choice. Set against the vibrant backdrop of the Monterey Peninsula and peopled with quirky characters, this stylish art caper entertains on every page.

Particulars of the Book:
Paperback: 270 pages
Publisher: INDI Best, INDI Publishing Group



About the Author:

Linda Schroeder divides her time between the bright sun of California and the high mountains of Colorado. She has a Master’s degree in English and one in Communicative Disorders/Audiology. In addition to her novel, Artists & Thieves, she has published a college text.

Her early interest in English expanded to include language disorders and she began a second career as an audiologist and aural rehabilitation therapist working with deaf and hard-of-hearing children and adults.

Currently, she studies and practices Chinese brush painting, celebrating the vitality and energy of nature. She follows art and art theft blogs and writes her own blog about art and sometimes includes reviews of novels. She is working on two more novels, a second Mai Ling novel about the Diamond Sutra, and a Sammy Chan art mystery about the forgery of a Goya painting.

You can visit her website at www.artistsandthieves.com.

Ms Schroeder Joins A Bookish Libraria With This Guest Post!

            "NEVER BORE YOUR READER: FIVE QUICK TIPS FOR WRITERS"

         I compose using my computer, but I rewrite with a pencil. Not just any pencil. A white pencil with black script down its length which says, three times, “I will not make any more boring art.”  It’s a quote from John Baldessari, the famous artist. I have a dozen of these pencils. I bought them at the Palm Springs Art Museum when they had a show of Baldessari’s works. I also bought his eraser stamped in black ink WRONG.

          Now what else does a writer need? A pencil and an eraser. You write your story, then you rewrite and erase the boring parts.

          If only that were easy.

          I’m not sure how many things Baldessari finds boring—palm trees, he says, are mundane. I know what I find boring in novels—characters who stand still while they talk,  characters whose bodies never feel anything, action scenes bogged down by long sentences, bland settings as if color and smell don’t exit.

          My art mystery, Artists & Thieves, won the San Diego Book Awards in the action/suspense category. Many readers tell me that they can see exactly what is happening. My editor, Mary Holden, said it was as visual as a movie. I had a lot of help getting it to that point. Here are just a few things that worked for me.

           TIP #1  When you write dialogue, envision yourself as a stage director. Put the characters on stage and tell them what gestures to make, what way to turn, where to walk while they read their lines. And put those actions in between some of the lines of dialogue. Then you won’t end up with talking heads—line after line of disembodied speech like two answering machines on “playback.”

          Tip # 2  Things that happen to your characters cause physical or emotional reactions. Acknowledge them. Stomachs lurch, jaws tighten, eyebrows arch, fingers tingle, eyes blink, muscles cramp, pain consumes, sobs shake, tears fall.

          Tip #3  Short sentences reflect the fast pace of an action scene: “The gun fired. He screamed and fell into the river. She ran.”   Forget something like this:  “After the gun’s loud report and the speeding bullet had smashed into his already bleeding torso, he flailed his arms as a loud wail left his lips and he lost his footing, tumbling headlong into the swift current of the Sacramento River so that she had to run alone with all her might to get away from the possibility of a second bullet coming at her.”

          Tip #4 The world is full of interesting places in which to place your characters. Smelly wharfs, dusty rodeos, grungy cafes, disinfected hospital rooms, fragrant flower fields, wet street corners, flashy car dealerships, stinky classrooms.  Don’t put your characters anywhere unless you know exactly what that place looks like, what odors are there, what things feel like there. That’s your job. The mood of the story depends on sensory information. 

          Tip # 5 Learn what is boring in your story by showing it to someone who knows how to choose words, craft a scene, develop characters, fashion a plot. In other words, a professional writer. Take writing classes. Go to writing conventions. Join a critique group. Find the genre groups in your area. Most groups have open meetings.

          And above all, don’t make any more boring art.

More About "Artists and Thieves:"

Winner of the 2011 San Diego Book Awards, Action/Suspense category

Find the book on:  Amazon  and  Barnes & Noble

Enter Here to Win A Kindle Fire!



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"Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life" by Natalie Dykstra~The Shattering Of A Brilliant Woman

Known for her quick wit, being widely read and having an envied grasp of literature and art, the independently-minded and gracious photographic artist Clover Adams took her life in 1885.  This is her story.

Published by:  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Pages:  330

Genre:  Biography/Non-fiction

Find out more:  http://nataliedykstra.com/

Cover Rating:

This gorgeous cover which seems a take on a painting by John Singer Sargeant depicts the elegant lady of leisure of the late 1800's, just the time of Clover Adams.  Her near smile gives us the story in a nutshell...she's not exactly smiling, but she's not sour, either.  We're left to project what we will on her face.  I love this cover in all its fine details.  Perfect for drawing those who will most likely read it, women.  Rated:  A

Some Reviews :

“Natalie Dykstra writes of Clover Adams’s striking photographs that they ‘defeat distances between people and make time stand still.’ Dykstra’s biography achieves the same remarkable feat, bringing us close to an inspiring if ultimately tragic life, a celebrated marriage gone awry, a vanished world of privilege where the universally costly emotions of love, loss, and envy nevertheless hold sway. ‘I spare you the inside view of my heart,’ Clover Adams once wrote to her beloved father. Natalie Dykstra spares nothing in this eloquent and powerfully sympathetic portrait of the artist as a lady, a haunting hymn to women’s ways of seeing.” — Megan Marshall, author of The Peabody Sisters

“What happened to Clover Adams broke Henry Adams’s heart. And in Natalie Dykstra’s splendid retelling, it will break yours. This is a moving book, deeply researched, fast-paced, and profoundly engaging. It is not easy to write a book the family for so long did not want written. Dykstra has succeeded in doing so, and she has returned Clover Adams to us as a living figure.” — Robert D. Richardson, author of Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, Emerson: The Mind on Fire, and William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism

“At last, Clover Adams has the biography she deserves. Long glimpsed only as the wife of a famous man or the dazzling hostess to Gilded Age luminaries, she emerges here as a complex and fascinating woman — a thinker, writer, and photographer, but also a deeply troubled soul. Natalie Dykstra follows her subject from the academic circles of mid-nineteenth-century Boston to the halls of power in Washington, D.C., giving us a broader portrait of late-nineteenth-century life. But she never loses her focus on Clover and the dark demons that haunted her throughout her life. This is a compelling read, so beautifully written and persuasively argued it’s hard to put down.” — Martha A. Sandweiss, author of Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line

Author Natalie Dykstra has received a

National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship for her work on Clover Adams. She is a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society and associate professor of English at Hope College in Holland, MI.

The Dame's Review :

The only picture of Clover Adams.  When she died, her husband, Henry Adams destroyed all of her photographs in their home and all of her letters.  There were no other known pictures of her than this one.  No close ups.

Nearly 20 years ago I read a novel based on truth (which name I can't remember now) about Clover Adams, her unhappy marriage to Henry Adams, her life and death.  I have never been able to forget it.  Not because the novel was so wonderful, although it was well written, but because the story was so haunting.  In this biography by Natalie Dykstra I was struck with that same feeling of a shattered mirror...a life so beautiful, a woman so gifted and admired who found herself broken like delicate glass fallen from a shelf.  It's instance is like the flash of a camera's bulb.  Yet, it seems to linger on in my mind like an after image.  I can't get the life of Clover Adams out of my mind.  In this biography "Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life"  more of the puzzle of her life came together for me.  This is a book I expect to return to several times over the years.

It is no surprise that a child of a mother who was herself abandoned at a young age by a morbidly depressed mother, should have some residual of that original trauma.  Family heartache and major losses seem to leave lasting scars that mar the DNA.  Clover herself was just a 5 year old when her mother died.  She was nothing if not a child and  young woman hampered by a delicate mind and heart.  In fact, the Hooper family was fraught with death and depression to suicide.

Brought up with the expectations of a Boston Brahmin, Transcendentalist family whose standard was undoubtedly putting a brave and beautiful face on all things, must have been nearly more than Clover could bear as she grew up and married. No surprise that she became a scholar and brilliant conversationalist.  How else could she escape the emotional landscape she must  have found herself in?  How else could she create a "lovable" self and an image of what a woman was supposed to be except to excel at all things? How could she fail to be emotionally stalwart, yet "eccentric?"  How fragile her life must have been when the love she so desperately needed fell just out of her reach, ultimately.

Natalie Dykstra takes us on a personal journey with Clover Adams as she walks this thin line of child to womanhood.  We learn of her development, her education, her family and her friends.  We see her through the eyes of others who knew and loved her, and we ultimately see her through her own eyes by way of her photo lens. 

There is so much that could be said about this book and Mrs. Adams, but as an artist, I want to share with you my focus on Clover's art work; her photography, and what I saw there for myself.  If you will go to Ms Dykstra's website, it will lead you to a link with the Massachusetts Historical Society which has a collection of Clover's photographs.  These pictures are discussed in Dykstra's book.   I want to discuss her photography with you because I think it gives us insight into her better than any words can. 

What I see is this:  a disconnect between people, an isolation in subjects and their surroundings, an assortment of unrelated and strangely juxtaposed natural settings with human beings or animals, depressed and mournful women, distant faces and grim faced family members, trees stark and strikingly lonely and barren in their setting.  In her collection of works, only the few pictures of very young children give some levity to her portraits; a little girl on a metal riding horse, and two children beside a tree.  

For the most part Clover Adam's photographs are not pretty pictures.  There are mostly portrait sorts of pictures, and even given the mode of the times to remain sober without smiling, these pictures still have the odd body language and physical placements that create a more off-centered and disconnected feel.  Psychologically, they scream for help.  In one picture, three women of different ages are on a rock.  Two older women are faced completely away from the camera and are dressed in heavy black. They stand on or sit on rocks just over a third young girl who is dressed in a light white dress, sitting on a rock below them and facing the camera with a smile on her face. This is no ordinary three family members portrait on a  hillside. It seems to depict death overlooking life; or the different ages of women.  But, when it's studied more, the disconnect comes stronger with the placement of the women's backs to the camera.  There's another message here altogether...a deeper meaning going on.  Perhaps it's the hopefulness of a young girl's mind and the virginity of her spirit vs the reality/awareness of the truth of her existence?  I'm not sure.  It could be many things in Clover's mind.  Either way, it shows a brittleness of heart from the eye of the camera...from the one who set up the composition and made the effort to bring the process through to a photograph.

Although the majority of her photographs convey this feeling of disconnect and isolation, I found it also beautiful to see how Clover set many of her "stages" and compositions.  In the portraits of women, their surroundings were open-aired, at least.  I liked this idea, as if she were breathing a freedom and release into their worlds.  There is a particularly striking photograph of an elderly woman sitting on a porch just outside of an open door.  She's in a dark dress all buttoned up, white cap on, stitching something small in her hands.  There's a small dog at her feet.  And there's the image of a lovely art panelled screen just inside the door behind her.  The shadows are beautiful in this photo, but what struck me most is this vision of freedom.  There's the sense that the woman is escaping the confines not only of the house, but also of her age...she's sitting like a girl on the floor of the porch!  And behind her, slightly hidden in the half dark hallway is a screen with artwork on it.  It hints at something exotic, another story.  Like another life, a more exciting life that may have been left behind or concealed in this woman's life in the past.  It's a beautiful photograph.  If it's a projection of what Clover feels "might have been" or if it's a message of what this woman has lost in life, it's a very telling piece of work coming from her camera to us. 

Natalie Dykstra has done much justice to the life and work of Clover Adams.  This is a beautiful book about a fleeting and lavishly imagined life.  As in any story of a young woman of promise who takes her own life, this one is shocking and harshly jarring.  We seem to know her somehow.  And in that "knowing" it's difficult to let her go so easily.  No matter how many books are written about Clover Adams, I will always wish I knew what made her decide to drink that horrible vial of poison...why she chose to end her life as if trashed upon the wasteland of her artwork.  I will never quite be able to forgive Henry Adams for his harshness and cruelties to her, for disallowing her to shine, and for dismissing her so quickly from his mouth and memoirs.

This is a very readable and extensive work by Ms Dykstra.  She's a capable and learned biographer who has treated the life and heart of Clover Adams with delicacy and honor.  I loved this book and highly recommend it.  Without regard to Henry Adams, although he does play a major part in Clover's life, obviously, I think it's a strong slice of American history from a woman's perspective.  And I think it's a great tribute to the heart of women during an age of repression.

5 stars

Deborah/TheBookishDame

"Veronica's Nap" by Sharon Bially ~ Jewish Women Take Note!

Published by:  Connaissance Media

Pages: 236

Genre:  Contemporary Fiction, Women's Fiction

Summary :

Veronica Berg has everything she needs to achieve her dream of becoming a painter--a charming home studio in Provence, a hardworking husband, and a nanny who watches her two-year-old twins. Yet instead of painting, she spends her days lingering over meaningless chores and secretly indulging in lengthy naps.

When Veronica's Moroccan-born,Sephardic husband grows impatient with her aimlessness and challenges her to sell just one painting, Veronica must find a way to break the seductive rut that's overtaken her ambition and her life. Against the backdrop of the impending Iraq war, her quest triggers a surprising and often comical journey that reveals depression's sunny mask and the dark side of privilege and security.
With a cast of Sehpardic characters, Veronica's Nap gives a rare look at contemporary Jewish life in France.

Telling A Bit About Sharon:

As Authors go, Sharon Bially is a bit self-effacing, which is saying something...  She lived for 12 years in Paris and Aix-en-Provence before settling with her family in Massachusetts.  A graduate of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, she's a public relations professional and leads seminars for the Boston-based nonprofit literary arts organization Grub Street Writers. 

She's also a mother.


The Dame's Review :

This is the kind of book I want to recommend to all of my friends and family.  Sharon Bially has captured the angst of the artist, the struggles of motherhood, the trap of luxury and a coming to grips with growing into our best selves.  What a book, and what an exceptional writer.

I had a professor in art school who came right out of the box the first day of painting class saying, "You can never be a fine artist and be married with children."  Let me tell you, them was fightin' words in the '60's and early '70's to a bunch of women/feminist fine arts students!  Several of us were out to prove that man wrong. 

But, when my children were babies, I had to put away my beautiful brushes, oils and easels, though my sweet husband bought me a huge, gorgeous oak easel to encourage me there would "be a time" for me.

In "Veronica's Nap"  Sharon Bially takes up this question of "when are you going to paint?" Through her characters, Vero and Didier, we witness this struggle for motherhood, art and person hood.  Didier plays the prod with his constant badgering of Veronica to paint, to produce "just one painting" to sell.  It's no surprise that she's backed into the proverbial corner with a shocked and sleeping muse, which she's happy to join in her escapes to la-la-land.  It's also no wonder that she's tripped up by bouts of depression.

Sharon Bially is an author we need to watch.  Her ability to draw characters so likable and real is a literary achievement...particularly since she has her own children! And, her story is one that will resonate with women and men for many different reasons. There is a humorous twist to this book, but it may actually be an irony when taken in context, because in the whole it's not funny when we struggle to push against pressures to achieve and grow. Bially recognizes and conveys these things clearly; she writes her story in such a way that we're drawn chapter after chapter to the end.

This book is grandly universal.  I'm so grateful for that.  I learned so much about Moroccan, Shephardic family customs I wouldn't otherwise have had exposure to.  I enjoy reading about cultures that differ from mine.  "Veronica's Nap" gives us that flavor as well as another look at Provence and French culture.

This is a rich and beautifully tempered novel. In it you'll find ironic humor, tellings of motherhood, artistic sensibilities, marriage and family dynamics. A book you'll breeze through and want to share.


5 truly swirling stars

Deborah/TheBookishDame


Note:  This review is gratefully brought by way of "Pump Up Your Books" for an honest opinion on my part.