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I thought I would share a new novel with you Bone Whispers: A Novel by Rosalind Brackenbury Coffeetown Press, Feb. 14, 2024. You can also purchase the novel on Amazon. There will be a review coming soon.
When the bones of a woman are dug up on a beach in Dorset, whose are they? How do they connect with Nessa Halloran’s present life as memories of her English post-war childhood emerge to haunt her?
Nessa, now in her seventies, is back in England from the US to take care of her inherited house on the coast of Dorset. She arrives to hear news of human bones—a woman’s bones—dug up on the beach, after a cliff fall. As she walks the paths of her childhood again, memories begin to return. Whose bones are these? Why does she have the growing feeling that they are connected with her? How does the present echo the past? What place do guilt and recrimination take in her present life—and who, apart from her childhood love, Ted, can help her find the truth of what really happened?
About the Author:
Rosalind Brackenbury was born in London, England, grew up in the UK and has lived in Scotland and France. She has lived in Key West for nearly 30 years with her American husband.
She has been writing all her life and has published novels and collections of poetry, as well as award-winning short stories. She was Creative Writing Fellow at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg VA, in 2006 and 2012. In Key West she has run yearly poetry and prose workshops at The Studios of Key West and she has been featured both as panelist and moderator at the Key West Literary Seminar. She was Key West’s second Poet Laureate in 2014-15. She has a daughter and a son, both living in the UK.
Rosalindbrackenbury.com
Paperback and Ebook editions available: Publication Date: February 14, 2024
Paperback: 228 pages
$16.95
ISBN-10: 1684921457 ISBN-13: 978-1684921454
Praise for
MISS STEPHEN’S APPRENTICESHIP
“With uncommon grace and wit, Rosalind Brackenbury investigates Virginia Woolf’s journey from Victorian daughter to great writer. It takes a writer to truly see another writer’s awakening, and Brackenbury’s gifts as a novelist and poet inform this telling of ‘what happens inside the head and body of a writer’—that irreducible alchemy. A necessary book.”
—Nancy Schoenberger, author, Dangerous Muse: The Life of Lady Caroline Blackwood
“The book is as timely as it is compelling since it illuminates the perennial question: Can one learn to become a genius? While Brackenbury is too honest to answer this (unanswerable) inquiry definitively, her attempts are supple, fecund, engrossing. That her voice is a charming mix of casual intelligence, erudition, and striking lyricism makes her musings all the more captivating. With clarity, brevity, insight, and wit, the text describes the challenges and rewards of the writing life as well as offers bracing advice for writers, ranging from ‘read avidly’ to ‘pay attention’ to ‘set a routine’ to ‘push to emotional extremes.’”
—Eric G. Wilson, author, My Business Is to Create
“Rosalind Brackenbury deserves major attention for her major accomplishments. She keeps turning out beautifully written, smart, absorbing novels that satisfy me in every way. One is better than the next and Without Her, about love and friendship changing with age, is her best.”
— Phyllis Rose, author of Parallel Lives and My Year of Reading Proust
“I absolutely loved this book…” on Without Her
— Annie Dillard, author of The Maytrees
Praise for
BECOMING GEORGE SAND
“Read Becoming George Sand for the beauty of the prose, for the intertwined and compelling stories of two brave and piercingly alive women. Read it most of all, though, for its honesty, the way it reveals and illuminates certain truths and longings that are often believed to be secreted inside only one individual, but are in fact universal. This is not so much a story about having a love affair as it is a study of the nature of love itself. I was absolutely knocked out by it.”
—Elizabeth Berg, author of the forthcoming Once Upon a Time, There Was You, as well as Open House, What We Keep, The Year of Pleasures, Talk Before Sleep, and many others
“I enjoyed Becoming George Sand very much. It is thoughtful, lyrical and adventurous, and I liked the contrasts between glowing Majorca and cold Edinburgh, between past and present, all beautifully orchestrated. George Sand comes across to us as a real woman as well as an important writer, and an inspiring example of generosity and energy.”
—Margaret Drabble
“This is a beautiful, wise novel. The intertwining of past and present, of France and Scotland, of genius and analysis is done with an ease that disguises the consummate skill of the writing. A lovely book.”
— Edmund White, author of The Flaneur and City Boy
“An elegant novel which offers sensitive and witty reflections upon an astonishingly wide range of topics, Becoming George Sand is a great read and its characters—the struggling writer Maria Jameson and the indefatigable George Sand—are enchanting company.”
—Valerie Martin, author of Property
“A wonderful book—filled with wisdom, poetry, and imagery so brilliant I wish I could steal it. Maria is a character to love, whose loves are vivid, embracing, and revelatory. This is a treasure!”
—Annie Dillard
“Written with brilliant assurance and a rich, stirring voice, Becoming George Sand is a masterful tale that travels the world in pursuit of its extraordinary characters and takes readers on a journey filled with wisdom and an unforgettable sense of joy and inspiration.”
—Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Crescent and The Language of Baklava
“Brackenbury’s fine new novel makes the worlds of present-day Edinburgh and nineteenth-century France both wonderfully real and full of moving emotional drama.”
—Alison Lurie, author of Foreign Affairs
“Here is a delicious and devastating account of the lives and loves of two women, one contemporary and Scottish, the other the legendary George Sand; both writers. The parallel lives are tellingly written, and this matters: the story also reveals the persuasive, elusive shadows that writing and reading insinuate into the texture of a life.”
—Harry Mathews, author of My Life in CIA and former editor at the Paris Review
Be watching for the upcoming review.
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
