Kirjahaku

What do we really know about our parents? Summer, 1972. Catherine is thrust headlong into an identity crisis in the lead-up to her sixteenth birthday when her much-adored mother reveals her unexpected plans to marry. To add to this, her beloved twin sister announces she's leaving home for dance school. Left to her own devices-too young to work and drive, Catherine embarks on a detective mission to piece together the puzzle of her mother's vibrant past. She is not prepared for what she encounters, however, and what begins as innocent search soon becomes frustrated obsession. To deal with her complex feelings, Catherine begins a journal to find a point of stability in the chaos of her life. Hilariously funny, impetuous, impatient, sometimes annoying and always remarkable, Catherine freely quotes literature, pops pills, and casts her eye unflinchingly around her world as she takes the reader through the turmoil of her teenage brain. A Little Birdie Told Me is a unique coming-of-age tale set against the backdrop of shifting times. As emotional as it is uplifting, this is a novel that will stay with you for years after turning the last page.

BRONZE MEDAL WINNER, LITERARY FICTION, 2019 READERS' FAVORITE AWARDS Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune: "A remarkable book. An unbelievable pleasure. Stylish. Packs an emotional punch." In Pushing the River, Barbara Monier's third novel, a family crisis erupts when a fifteen-year-old becomes pregnant and decides to keep the baby. Madeline describes her house as an empty shell inhabited by ghosts. She has been living alone for years, keeping to a few rooms, surrounded by the possessions of her ex-husband and grown children. Over the course of four months, people accumulate in the household one by one-including Madeline's new love interest, who unexpectedly shows up carrying grocery bags full of his clothes. Pushing the River is told largely through Madeline's eyes. As we discover how she came to "push the river," the unfolding action is interspersed with Madeline's memories of her own mother, driving a message of sometimes-anarchic confusion, occasional angst, and powerfully abiding love across the generations of a familiar American family.

SILVER MEDAL WINNER, LITERARY FICTION, 2020 READERS' FAVORITE AWARDS Why has Mazie returned to her old farm-her family's summer home and a pivotal refuge throughout her life? While there, Mazie meets and befriends an elderly woman. Mazie is adrift on a sea of memory as she gazes toward the rocky orchard above the farmhouse when movement in the far distance captures her attention. Lula emerges eerily from the morning fog, and a gentle, cautiously loving relationship between youth and old age begins. As the two women meet each morning to play cards, Mazie considers the shape of her life and the nature of her recollections through stories she tells to her new, older friend. The women travel together through Mazie's stories as if they are tentatively feeling their way through the stony risks hidden by the mist beneath the apple trees. Like a vision that disappears into the distance, it becomes increasingly unclear exactly what events in Mazie's life caused her to return to the farm. And as she explores the illusory intersection of past, present and future, Mazie begins to question whether it was, in fact, a coincidence that Lula came into view one cool morning-and whether anything she believes or feels is real.