Beth Kephart's Blog, page 284

Before I ever wrote a book like Dangerous Neighbors

I was this little girl wielding a fat black pencil, trying hard to be good.  Katherine, my Dangerous Neighbors heroine, has grown up feeling responsible—trapped by that, unable to escape it.  She may be a 19th century character, my Katherine.  But I understand her very well.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand/Helen Simonson: A Passage

It was this kind of downpour day, and I cherished the excuse to read deeper into Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, a truly affecting debut novel by Helen Simonson.  What does love look like when it's new and you are not?  How does a man getting on in age combat the lusty greed of the son he sired?  What is it to stand in a familiar place and watch the coming end of day?  What is it to be proper in England and also, impeccably, falling in love with the Pakistani shopkeeper, Mrs. Ali?  Simonson's w...

Phoenixville, PA

Last night, in search of a way to make the familiar new, we set out for Phoenixville, 25 minutes down the road, a town that was immortalized, perhaps not entirely justly, by Alice Sebold in her controversial second novel, The Almost Moon.



As passers through, we find much to love.

The things writers carry

Sometimes I carry my images with me, place to place, until the book I am writing is ready for them, or until I am.  The toting feels physical, material.  I stand straighter, breathe easier when I get the image down.

The summer of laundry

I shall call this the Summer of Laundry, a many-week sweep during which my son, over the course of his every day, would trade his gym shirt for his work shirt for his hanging out shirt for his going out shirt, and in between all that, the rest of the house was very hot and very sweaty. Every other day, there were piles, and with a one-handed husband (the cast comes off in a week; the therapy shall begin; the healing, this time, will take time) and a son rarely home, the piles of things were l...

Tall Philadelphia and Life in the Thumb

 In Dangerous Neighbors, Katherine is forever climbing towers and hills to get a better view of her city, something I am prone to do today.  I took this shot of my city from the Cira Centre bridge, just across the Schuylkill River, on the west side.  That's the new Comcast building, rising tallest in the center.  Far beyond, to the right, is William Penn balanced on the top of City Hall.  It wasn't all that long ago when no one dared build any higher than Penn's generous bronze hat.  As one w...

Descent

Where I go

These past many weeks long, my friends have written from far-off, quiet places—cabins near the shore, cabanas high on the beach, the slip of land beside the lake, a grandfather's lodge.  They've been reading and writing, staked out on a chair, cracking clamshells at night, throwing a lobster to the grill.  These are writers and readers, taking time away to do what they most love to do.



We haven't had that sort of summer here (though I have yearned for such a day or two).  Now it's August's e...

Sisterly

This morning, the very dear and very smart Priya turns 15, and because her sister, Maya, adores her and hopes to surprise her and knows that we are out here wanting the same, she asked if we might post a little something in remembrance of this special day.



I had been wondering about what I might post, and then I had an idea that took me back into an old wooden photo album.  Perhaps, I thought, there is a photograph of me and my sister, something I might share.  I turned every page, didn't fi...

Philly Girl

Though I moved a lot when I was a kid, I always came home to my mother's Philadelphia—its suburbs on the fringe, the University of Pennsylvania campus (as a student), tiny apartments on Camac Street and Gaskill Street, back out to the fringe as a new mother, then in and out, these days, to visit clients or to teach at my alma mater (recently tied for fifth on the U.S. News and World Report university ranking, I was proud and pleased to read the other day). 



I consider myself, in other words,...