Beth Kephart's Blog, page 359

A Lovestruck Summer and Books that Connect

This past Memorial Day Weekend, I took the short trip down the road to the local bookstore and spent some meandering time. At the high school reading list table (love those tables) I pondered classics I hadn't yet read and picked up Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. At the popular paperbacks I found and collected a book long on my list—Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog. My agent, Amy Rennert, had suggested Marianne Wiggins' The Shadow Catcher (about the American West an

Sometimes

the most important thing is stop your work, get in your car, and drive to your father's house, when he's not expecting you. To find him out back, watching the birds in the trees and at their well-stocked feeder. To sit with him through mourning doves and orioles, woodpeckers and finches. To leave a book, a new one, behind.[image error]

Black Market, Cold War/Paul Steege: A Book Review

Paul Steege is a friend. A Princeton graduate who reminds me, often, of my own brother, another Princeton alum. A broad-thinking, socially responsible, inventive soul with whom I loved serving on our church outreach committee. An associate professor of history at Villanova University, who was in attendance this past Friday evening at a dinner honoring the Distinguished Historians Lecture Series my father has bestowed there in memory of my mother. A man with whom I can talk at length about r

House of Dance a 2009 Bank Street College of Education Best

I was at the dance studio today when word came in that House of Dance was named a 2009 Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book.

I am, of course, entirely grateful. House joins books written by some of my literary heroes and heroines—Sharon Creech, Jane Yolen, Louise Erdrich, Avi, Neil Gaiman, and Mary Engelbreit, among others.[image error]

Nothing but Ghosts/Undercover Paperback

Yesterday, while walking down the street, I heard the golden-voiced Devon Horse Show emcee introducing a Floridian horse named Undercover. I stood and waited as Undercover jumped a clean, high-gated round, a good-luck omen, I thought. Today Jill Santopolo writes to tell me that my own Undercover paperback has officially launched as of this hour. "I hope you celebrate," she said.

An hour later the mail brought a package from Jill containing the hardback of Nothing but Ghosts. It was the first

The Poet of Property (and For-Hire College Essays)

So there I was, taking a break from not writing, reading the New York Times, about to rush right past the Real Estate section (I own my house, and I'm not moving) when a headline—The Poet of Property—caught my eye. Since I've written about real estate and architecture since I started my business at the age of 25, I thought I might stop to discover what I might learn from a NYT-worthy subject.

I learned, among other things, that Valerie Haboush, the story's star, pens "property descriptions" and

Novel in Progress/An Excerpt

It’s been a few years since they let the patients go—herded the inmates away in buses; slipped the loonies down the loop in cars; did not see the only escapee who shuffled straight to the river, crab walked the bogged banks, and paddled deep into the channel. So that she wasn’t found until three days later—a turtle egg in the nest of her hair, a chewed strip of rubber on her wrist. A child made the discovery. He’d been playing. He had thought at first that she was Galatea, the milk-white on

In just moments

it would be on her tongue—cherry cool and sweet.

That was my childhood, too. That was my once.[image error]

Her job

was to stand, creaseless and unspoiled, in the blazing sun. To make us guess her face. To suggest balance in asymmetry and poise regardless of heat. To hear the merry cranking go-round go-round go-round around repetitions of a near-identical song.

I could not be her.

I do not have poise.

I am impatient.

I want.[image error]

She would ride next,

and it was her father who was down below, saying, "You have done this, you can do this, be brave." She watched the ring. She counted the jumps. She kept her one hand on her mount's neck.

Don't fail me.[image error]