false 5 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Mon Oct 01 13:15:15 -0700 2007 Mon Oct 01 13:15:52 -0700 2007 Kate Riley is not the sort of heroine we meet in most American novels. Self-centered, shape-shifting, driven from one man to another and one city to the next, she is all too real—but not at all the loyal and steady homebody of idealized womanhood. When we first encounter her, Kate (or Katherine, or Kate of the Prairie, or Katrina) is about to undergo exploratory brain surgery for a condition she herself has fabricated. Sobered by the gravity of the procedure, she commences a journey of memory that takes us back to the Saskatchewan village where she grew up and to the singular event that altered her forever and irrevocably set the course of her life.

From her childhood, in which she was held captive to a mother gone mad, through her adult life, which unfolds as a mesmerizing sequence of men, abandoned children, and perpetual movement, Kate’s story is one of desperation and remarkable invention, a strangely American tale, brilliantly narrated by one of our most original writers.

Lynn Stegner is the author of four novels, including Undertow, Fata Morgana, and Pipers at the Gates of Dawn, which was awarded the Faulkner Society’s Gold Medal for Best Novella. The manuscript for Because a Fire Was in My Head won the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Award for Best Novel of 2005. Stegner currently directs the Santa Fe Writers’ Workshop and lives in Santa Fe with her husband, the writer Page Stegner, and their daughter, Allison.

“[S]tunning . . . The poetic detail of Stegner’s sentences—not to mention her wanton protagonist—is reminiscent of the novels of John Updike. . . . Because a Fire Was in My Head, her most ambitious novel so far, ought to attract for Stegner the wider audience she so richly deserves.”—Julia Scheeres, New York Times Book Review, “Editor’s Choice”

“A novel fully realized on every level, Because a Fire Was in My Head is a provocative literary work of weight and luster. A risky, intermittently melodramatic tale, it casts light both on the timeless mysteries of the human psyche and on the paradoxes of a notoriously contrary epoch, namely, post-World War II North America. . . . [A] bold and stunning novel.”—Donna Seaman, Los Angeles Times Book Review]]>