Revenge

Dear Reader:

How is it possible to forgive someone who's done something horrible to you?  Or to forgive yourself for causing great harm to another person?  And what does it mean to forgive someone, anyway? I write fiction in order to explore questions that are obsessing me, and the necessity of forgiveness and redemption were on my mind when I wrote The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady. 

One day, in our public library, I stumbled upon Eileen Welsome's book,The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War. Welsome's book, which began as a series of articles in the Albuquerque Tribune, exposed the abuses of patients kept secret by government scientists for almost fifty years. These scientists invited orphans at the Fernald State Asylum in Massachusetts to join a science club and then, unbeknownst to the orphans, laced their breakfast oatmeal with radioactive iodine. In Nashville, doctors caring for low-income pregnant women gave them prenatal vitamin drinks that were actually radioactive "cocktails." Many of these unsuspecting guinea pigs and their children developed health problems, including cancer. 

Photo credit: Karen Lucchini

As a novelist I kept trying to imagine how these women must have felt when they learned the truth, in the early nineties, about the prenatal "health drinks" they'd been given years earlier.  I also wondered how the doctors and their staff justified their behavior to themselves. They weren't all "bad" people. Arrogant and monomaniacal perhaps, but not necessarily evil. Certainly the Cold War offered them rationalizations, but there was more to it than that. I wanted to explore what might have gone on in their heads, and how they might have lived with themselves afterwards. 

This book is my attempt to answer these questions.  But my story isn't bleak. This book taught me that humor, and even love, are possible even in the darkest of situations. 
 

Elizabaeth Stuckey-French 

For fans of Carl Hiaasen and Jill McCorkle and the movie "Little Miss Sunshine" alike comes an unforgettable dark comedy wrapped inside a wacky family drama, featuring one vengeful old lady hell-bent on murder.
 

Seventy-seven-year-old Marylou Ahearn is going to kill Dr. Wilson Spriggs, come hell or high water.  In 1953, he gave her a radioactive cocktail without her consent as part of a secret government study that had horrible consequences.  Fifty years later, she is still ticked off, and now that she has recently discovered where he lives, she's on a mission.
 

Told from the varied perspectives of an incredible cast of endearing oddballs, this lively, intricately plotted, laugh-out-loud novel beats with the heart of a genuinely affecting family drama.  This is an insanely entertaining story about revenge and, ultimately, forgiveness.

"A dark, humorous portrait of a dysfunctional modern family...a black comedy with an interesting premise and diverse, flawed characters.  If revenge is a dish best served cold, then Marylou Ahearn is serving up ice cream."

- Kirkus Reviews
 

Revenge of the Radioactive Lady is a "broadly comic, yet essentially heartfelt, absurdist satire." 
- Booklist

Th

Fiction / 320 pages / Paperback
Scribner / Feburary 2011

Dear Reader:

The inspiration for The Adults. my first novel, came from the point of view I developed growing up as the youngest in my family, my very large Italian family.  When I was ten, I had cousins who were thirty, so the children who were supposed to be my peers were in fact "the adults" with jobs and lawnmowers and mortgages.   I always had this eerie feeling of being borninto an already-formed family, like I was the last to show up at the party, and I arrived completely sober.  
 

So the perspective of "the witness" has always been of interest to me, particularly the witness who sees, but doesn't quite understand.  The Adults follows Emily Vidal from her teens into her early twenties, as she learns that the older people in her life are not what they seem.  The novel raises questions of what it means to "come of age"and whether any of us ever really do.   

Every so often, my father and I ask each other what our secret age is.   Mine is 14, his is 28.  What's yours?    

Alison Espach 

ALISON ESPACH IS GIVING AWAY 5 COPIES OF THE ADULTS.  ENTER TO WIN A COPY.

In her ruefully funny and wickedly perceptive debut novel, Alison Espach deftly dissects matters of the heart and captures the lives of children and adults as they come to terms with life, death, and love.
 

At the center of this affluent suburban universe where neighbors commit suicide and high school teachers have suspect relationships with students, is Emily Vidal, a smart and snarky teenager, exposed to the world of grown-ups.  Among the cast of unforgettable characters is Emily's father, whose fiftieth birthday party has the adults descending upon the Vidal's patio; her mother, who has orchestrated the elaborate party even though she and her husband are getting a divorce; and an assortment of eccentric neighbors, high school teachers, and teenagers who teem with anxiety and sexuality and an unbridled desire to be noticed, and ultimately loved.

An irresistible chronicle of a modern young woman's struggle to grow up, The Adults lays bare -- in perfect pitch -- the world where an adult and a child can so dangerously be mistaken for the same exact thing.

 
Reviews of The Adults

"Espach perfects the snarky, postironic deadpan of the1990s and teenagers everywhere, and her ear for modern speech and eye for fresh detail transform a familiar story into an education in what it means to be a grown-up."

 - Publishers Weekly

"With shining prose and razor-sharp wit, Alison Espach writes about the murky landscape between childhood and adulthood, the mistakes and misunderstandings, the betrayals and the beauty. The Adults is a piercing and authentic journey through adolescence, filled with squeamish missteps and laugh-out-loud insights, wrenching heartache, and characters so rich and tenderly drawn that one can't help but love them through all their flaws and failures.  I absolutely adored this book."

 - Aryn Kyle, author of The God of Animals and Boys and Girls Like You and Me

 Visit Alison's website or her publisher's book page, find out about her upcoming events and follow her on on Facebook. You can also try Alison's recipes for Mom's Anise Cookies and Dirty Martinis paired with The Adults.
 

It all started with a Christmas gift. After compiling hundreds of recipes my grandmother had collected and created over several decades, I'd set out to self-publish a cookbook for the family. While interviewing Grandma Jean for the biographical section, she revealed a little-known fact: She and my late grandfather had met only twice before marrying during World War II. She then retrieved from her closet a secret collection of love letters sent from the young Navy man to his "sweetheart."

Long after our visit, I continued to ponder their courtship, and couldn't help but wonder: How well can you truly know someone through letters alone? What if you planned your entire future based upon writings of deception?

From these thoughts came the premise of Letters from Home. I hope the story touches your heart as much as my grandpa's letters have touched mine.

With warm regards,
 

Kristina McMorris

KRISTINA MCMORRIS IS GIVING AWAY 5 COPIES OF LETTERS FROM HOME.  ENTER TO WIN A COPY.

In the midst of World War II, a Midwestern infantryman falls deeply in love through a yearlong letter exchange, unaware that the girl he's writing to isn't the one replying. Woven around this tenuous thread are three female friends whose journeys toward independence take unexpected turns as a result of romance, tragedy, and deception, their repercussions heightened by an era of the unknown. Beautifully rendered and deeply moving, Letters from Home is a story of hope and connection, of sacrifices made in love and war and the chance encounters that change us forever.

Reviews for Letters from Home:

"Ambitious and compelling...[a] sweeping debut."
 - Publishers Weekly

"An absolutely lovely debut novel."

 - Kristin Hannah, author of Firefly Lane
 

For more information, visit Kristina's website, follow her on Facebook and Twitter, and see her behind-the-book video.

 Kristina McMorris is available to speak with your book club by phone or Skype.  Contact Kristina to arrange a discussion.