Shimmering with rage and sparkling with subtle humor, BILLIE STARR’S BOOK OF SORRIES showcases Edgar Award-nominee Deborah E. Kennedy’s singular voice as Jenny, a heroine in the vein of Olive Kitteridge in Crosby, Maine and Miles Roby in Empire Falls, shines a light on the town of Benson, Indiana, where lakes, grudges, and family rifts run deep – but so does a mother’s love.
BILLY STARR’S BOOK OF SORRIES
by Deborah E. Kennedy
Flatiron/St. Martin’s Press, October 2022
Sometimes, a woman has to rescue herself. Jenny Newberg, Queen of Bad Decisions, is about to make another one. In a small town where everyone knows everyone’s business, down-on-her-luck single mother Jenny is on a first-name basis with the debt collector at the bank, who is moving toward foreclosure. She is constantly apologizing to her precocious young daughter, Billie Starr, who is filling a book with her mother’s sorries, and it seems to Jenny that no apology will ever be enough.
Then a pair of strangers in black suits offers her a hefty check to seduce someone known as the Candidate. Finally, something will go her way.
But nothing ever goes as Jenny plans, and she is swept into the Candidate’s orbit. Surrounded by a wide universe of new ideas, she realizes how constrained her life has been by the expectations of everyone around her, and she starts to see how much more she might be capable of. And when her world is rocked to its core and Billie Starr may be in danger, Jenny is forced to do what she once thought impossible: trust in herself and her own power to make things right.
Deborah E. Kennedy is a native of Fort Wayne, Indiana and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the author of Tornado Weather, which was an Edgar Award Nominee for Best First Novel. Kennedy has worked as both a reporter and editor, and also holds a Master’s in Fiction Writing and English Literature from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
Fame. Fortune. Love. You can’t have them all.
Ana will never forget her mother’s face when she sent her and her baby brother, Oskar, out of their Polish ghetto and into the arms of a Christian friend. For Oskar, though, their new family is the only one he remembers. When a woman from a Jewish resettlement organization seizes them, claiming to have their best interest at heart, Ana sees an opportunity to reconnect with her roots, while Oskar sees only the loss of the home he loves. Roger grows up in a monastery in France, inventing stories and trading riddles with his best friend in a life of quiet concealment. When a Jewish aunt seeks to reclaim him, the Church steals him across the Pyrenees before relinquishing him to family in Jerusalem. Renata, a graduate student in archaeology, has spent her life unearthing secrets from the past—except for her own. After her mother’s death, Renata’s grief is entwined with all the questions her mother left unanswered, including why they fled Germany so quickly when Renata was a little girl. Two decades after the war, these characters are each building lives for themselves in Israel, trying to move on from the trauma and loss that haunts them. But as their stories converge in unexpected ways, they must ask where they truly belong. Beautifully evocative and tender, filled with both luminosity and anguish, ONCE WE WERE HOME illuminates a little-known history. Based on the true stories of children stolen during wartime, this heart-wrenching novel raises questions of complicity and responsibility, good intentions and unforeseen consequences, as it confronts what it really means to find home.
When confronted with pain and obstacles, we often shrink back out of fear and disappointment. But in REAL LIFE, Sharon Salzberg lets us know it doesn’t have to be that way. When we feel alone, cut off, or trapped, we can let those difficulties steer us onto a path toward an authentic, flourishing life—living in a way that allows us to find the wholeness that lies within. Even when we’re alone, a sense of community can accompany us through the stormy times. Our words, hearts, and actions can line up with a larger vision, rather than the smaller views our anxious, fearful thoughts arouse in us. To live in a less constricted way, Salzberg says, we need to get real about what’s most important, to ask ourselves, “What do I most deeply yearn for?” “What would I benefit from letting go of?” “What do I believe is possible for me?” By developing tools like mindful awareness, friendship and a greater sense of purpose, we can accomplish the journey to expansive freedom and live the life that speaks to our innermost longing to live free.
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