O. Henry Prize winner Jan Ellison’s debut novel is a puzzle with the outside pieces finished. Reading it is like compulsively fitting all those revealing middle pieces together. Annie Black, a happily married 40-something San Francisco businesswoman, delves into her careless youth after her 21-year-old son is injured in a car accident. Spinning a tale of the three drunken months she spent in Europe in 1989, she demonstrates how the past can shape the future.

Disillusioned after her alcoholic father abandons the family for another woman, 19-year-old Annie leaves her meager hometown prospects for Europe, securing an office job in London. There, she quickly develops a drinking problem and, when her married boss, Malcolm, takes a shine to her, she gets entangled in a mess of midlife crises and misplaced desires. Malcolm’s wife—with his encouragement—is sleeping with charismatic photographer Patrick. Malcolm hopes Annie will become his own romantic companion. Annie, however, falls hopelessly for the selfish but charming Patrick. Things come to a peak over a fateful Christmas in Paris. When an old photograph arrives in Annie’s mailbox in 2011, she learns that ripples from this event have fanned out for two decades, and now they threaten her marriage and her son’s life.

Annie’s ruminations on past sins and the nature of memory are thoughtful, even when the reliability of her narration is suspect. She is often extremely unlikable. But for much of the book, she is also very young. She reminds us of the times we’ve been selfish, the times we’ve been foolish, the selves we think we’ve escaped. Skillfully weaving two plots, Ellison unveils the details of each, piece by tantalizing piece. Hard to put down despite its heavy tone, A Small Indiscretion asks a big question: Should Annie be forgiven? Should we be forgiven? Fans of family-themed literary fiction will find it compelling.

This article was originally published in the February 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Brooke Davis’ story of a little girl named Millie Bird turns child abandonment into an adventure. After her father dies and her mother leaves her in the ladies’ underwear department, Millie finds two improbable helpers: Karl, who types out everything he says or feels with his fingers, and Agatha, who writes complaint letters and catalogs her aging body’s daily changes. Karl and Agatha, both in their 80s and widowed, have lived long lives but don’t quite know how to live now. Millie’s predicament gives them a reason to try. 

In Lost & Found, Australian author Davis renders Millie, especially, in careful detail—she’s fragile, yet not completely unhinged by all the upheaval in her life. Millie comes across as a 7-year-old should: curious, experimental, hopeful, afraid but covering with bravado and optimism. From vantage points further on, Karl and Agatha are doing much the same. 

Davis’ vivid imagining of the grieving process as a roller coaster of questions with no easy answers reflects some of her personal struggle, as her mother’s sudden death occurred not long before she began this project. Readers will find themselves pondering difficult questions along with Millie, Karl and Agatha. A literal cross-country journey aids in their individual quests to find out and embrace what it means to still be here after loss.

This article was originally published in the February 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Louisiana’s capital city, Baton Rouge, has its fair share of glamorous and not-so-glamorous stories. M.O. Walsh, author of My Sunshine Away, grew up there, so he captures these contradictions effortlessly in his stunning debut.

Set in 1989, the novel tells the heartbreaking story of Lindy Simpson, the once carefree and spirited track star whose life goes awry after she is attacked on her own street. The mystery unravels from the perspective of Lindy’s childhood neighbor and playmate, now 14, who has been in love with Lindy for as long as he can remember.

While showing the chilling effect the crime has on all of Piney Creek Road, Walsh also raises the question of how a horrific crime can happen in a seemingly idyllic neighborhood. And the answer is, like so many things in Louisiana, that nothing is as ideal as it seems. Kids playing in the street are in constant battle against being smothered by mosquitoes and humidity. Neighborhood cookouts buzz with energy but also the gossip of divorce and family tragedies.

Walsh juxtaposes the beauty and terror of the place in a way that leaves you utterly captivated. It’s a world that seems foreign to outsiders but also resonates with the most universal of sentiments, including the desire to belong, the way memory can both create and fill voids, and how peace often follows the realization that the potential for good is in all of us.

From beginning to end, My Sunshine Away is full of wisdom, wit and wonder.

This article was originally published in the February 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In Welcome to Braggsville, four Berkeley college friends decide to protest a Civil War re-enactment by staging a “performative intervention.” Daron, the white protagonist from small-town Braggsville, Georgia, where the “Patriot Days” celebration is held, reluctantly accompanies his friends to his home: Candice, whom Daron yearns for, an earnest activist who claims to be part-Native American; Charlie, a quiet black teen from Chicago; and Louis, an Asian kid from California with aspirations to be a stand-up comedian.

Daron finds that his time spent in the enclave of "Beserkerly" has made him uncomfortably conscious of his town’s casual racism. When they put their plan in motion, things quickly go from comic to tragic.

It’s the telling that sets this book apart. Madcap, satirical, sometimes profane and uncanny in his descriptions, whether he’s portraying self-conscious academia or a backyard barbecue, T. Geronimo Johnson is both a relentless social critic and a compassionate bystander as he narrates the story through Daron’s eyes. The four friends, who dub themselves “the 4 Little Indians,” are naïve in the beginning—young and idealistic, fresh from the intellectual hothouse of Berkeley, they are convinced that ideas will win the day. When faced with entrenched hatred and fear, however, Daron realizes that ideas don’t carry much weight. He muses, “It had been hard not to feel a smug pride when he brought home this menagerie. . . . but now he felt as if he had driven through town with a fourteen-point buck strapped across his hood. Of course by nightfall everyone would be cold-nosing the back door after a slice.”

Though Johnson enjoys poking fun at the righteous arguments of scholars and militia members alike, his own questions about race and culture resonate throughout the book. Welcome to Braggsville is a deeply pleasurable read for the sheer wonder of Johnson’s prose, but a deeply disturbing read for the truth it reveals about us.

Greek mythology and Bulgarian fairy tales have never felt as modern as they do in Wildalone, Krassi Zourkova’s debut novel. Building on the momentum established by Stephenie Meyer’s ever-popular Twilight franchise, the Bulgarian-born Zourkova introduces fans of supernatural romance to a dark and heady new love triangle involving a gifted musician and two bewitching brothers.

Forsaking her family and her homeland, Thea Slavin leaves Bulgaria to attend Princeton University in the hope of becoming a world-class pianist . . . and of uncovering the truth behind the mysterious death of her older sister several years earlier. Struggling to assimilate into American culture and meet the demands of Ivy League life, Thea finds herself drawn into a sensual relationship with two brothers, Rhys and Jake Estin, each of whom seems to have secrets of his own—and the answers may lie in the myths and legends Thea grew up with and had dismissed as nothing more than stories. As shocking truths are revealed and fantasies made real, Thea must decide how far she will go for love.

Moody and mesmerizing, Wildalone is sure to appeal to lovers of the alpha-male romance. Despite working as a lawyer, Zourkova writes prose that is lush and seductive, whether she’s describing the Princeton campus or her own Bulgarian homeland—not to mention the electric relationship between Thea and her two suitors. An imaginative and ambitious first novel, Wildalone is a dark, sensual fairytale that will leave readers begging for a sequel.

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

RELATED CONTENT: Read a Q&A with Krassi Zourkova about Wildalone.

“Beginnings are crystal clear. Endings are too, once they’re final. It’s difficult to tell what part of the middle you’re in, though.”

The restlessness of that sentiment sums up Alison Jean Lester’s memorable protagonist quite well. A mix of “live and let live” and the dos and don’ts from her midcentury upbringing, the heroine of Lillian on Life slides off the page as real, complicated and contradictory.

We meet Lillian—and her insecurities, regrets and triumphs—in late middle age, as she’s solidifying her beliefs about herself and the world. As she mulls over the past decades of her life in episodic chapters, she reveals much—and occasionally conceals more.

In some passages, she straddles the fine line of self-pity; in other instances, she speaks incisively about her experiences of desire, disappointment or loss in ways that seem universal. One memory brings out a wistful softness while the next elicits a hardened life mantra.

Lillian embodies the quest to understand our natures and our lives—both what has happened to us and what we have chosen. The novel captures how our minds trip us up as Lillian meanders through her memories and flashes of poignant feeling in a nonlinear way. Yet for all the wandering, Lester’s narrative flows and holds together as we follow along. We feel Lillian’s disappointments and embarrassments, relate to her naiveté and shake our heads at her justifications. As someone who hears others’ voices rattling in her head long after they are gone, Lillian sifts through her thoughts on her judgmental mother, protective but passive Poppa and her varied lovers.

In Lillian, Lester has created a wry, self-conscious, introspective woman with a memorable voice to match. Like a portrait painted over and over, Lillian bears the evidence of many revisions. Her vulnerability is palpable in every story she relates. Each chapter acts like a signpost on Lillian’s journey to find peace with herself.

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Kevin Gillooly, the teenage protagonist of Christopher Scotton’s debut novel, The Secret Wisdom of the Earth, returns with his mother to her Eastern Kentucky hometown of Medgar after the horrific accidental death of his 3-year-old brother. Kevin’s father hopes a summer under the care of Pops, the family’s cantankerous patriarch and the town veterinarian, will restore the devastated Anne. For Kevin, his time in Medgar is not a retreat, but an introduction to the thorny issues of adulthood, as well as the healing power of nature, thanks to his friendship with Buzzy Fink, a local boy who instructs Kevin in the ways of wilderness.

The town knew better days when the nearby coal mines were productive. Now people are selling off their ancestral lands for the latest in coal extraction: mountaintop removal, which destroys the landscape. In a place with more poverty than opportunity, the choice to sell is a tempting one. A small group of townspeople oppose the powerful mining interests, including Pops. As Kevin accompanies Pops on his veterinary rounds into the hills and hollows, he begins to see what happens when a community loses its connection to its history—a connection Kevin has just discovered for himself, thanks to his time on the family homestead.

Among the novel’s many joys are its characters, which add humor, drama and heartbreak to this layered story. Though a few are just this side of stereotypical (the gay hairdresser, the sassy housekeeper, the repugnant mine company boss), they illustrate the way years of common experience and friendship can be tested by change and hardship. This affecting coming-of-age story faithfully portrays environmental concerns alongside rich family histories.

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James is at once alluring and unexpected. The novel opens with a letter from 83-year-old Etta to her husband, Otto. Etta has left the couple’s farm in Saskatchewan to walk more than 3,000 kilometers to see the ocean. In the letter, Etta tells Otto that she will try to remember to come back, a hint at her failing memory. Otto, hands trembling, decides not to follow.

The setting quickly shifts to the early 1930s, where we meet young Otto and his 16-member family of farmers; Etta, who lives in town with her parents and sister; and Russell, a displaced orphan who lives with his aunt and uncle next door to Otto. From there, the novel—still told partially in letters—alternates between the characters’ early years to Etta’s current-day cross-country journey, revealing how the trio met, what drives them, and how their lives became so intimately interwoven.

Layered alongside Etta’s journey is Otto’s trip across the Atlantic at age 17 to fight during World War II. As Otto serves abroad, Etta looks after Russell, and the two become more reliant on one another. In the present, Otto’s memories of the war come to the forefront as he copes with Etta’s absence.

Emma Hooper’s debut is intelligent, moving and captivating. Inspired by a piece of her own family history, the author examines with creativity the consequences of great love and loss, blurring the lines between memory, illusion and reality. Perfectly crafted and endearing in its unpredictability, Etta and Otto and Russell and James pulls readers along with every page turn.

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Life may not be going according to plan for Ceinwen Reilly, but she’s determined to find the cinema-worthy thread in her 1980s Lower East Side life. That may be easier said than done, given her retail job at a vintage shop and her shabby Avenue C apartment.

But this Mississippi transplant and film buff finds the romantic in everything, from saving for a particularly stunning pair of earrings to the antics of her two male roommates. So Ceinwen is easily bewitched by her elderly neighbor Miriam’s stories of working as a seamstress in Hollywood, which inspire a search for a long-lost silent film.

Film critic and blogger (“The Self-Styled Siren”) Farran Smith Nehme packs the story with tidbits of classic movie knowledge that are sure to delight cinema lovers. Set against a backdrop of the AIDS epidemic and a down-on-its-luck neighborhood, Missing Reels offers a fresh take on the traditional coming-of-age in New York story.

This article was originally published in the December 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.