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WHAT'S NEW? PLENTY! | |
Spend Some time with WATB? After Stephen Gallup, who was in my U of I Summer Writing Festival class a few years back, gave me a signed copy of What about the Boy? A Father’s Pledge to His Disabled Son, I set it aside for winter reading. Winter arrived, I’ve read the book and hallelujah for cold weather that plants you next to the fireplace by 7 p.m. The premise: Nobody knew what hurt little Joseph, and no one was offering a way to help him. He cried most of the time, and thrashed about as if in pain. He wasn't learning how to crawl, talk, or interact normally. Doctors told his parents to seek counseling, because nothing could help their son, and the quality of their own lives was at risk. Refusal to accept that advice changed their lives. Gallup chronicles a family's rejection of hopelessness and their commitment to the pursuit of normalcy. You’ll be intrigued by the controversial practice of infant/child patterning, amazed by the medical barriers that blocked little Joseph’s success and inspired by his parents’ determination to move their disabled son to normalcy. Ultimately, the author comes to acknowledge that "normalcy" has more than one definition. Read the book. You’ll be richer for the experience. www.fatherspledge.com/ One more thing: I moved the book down in my reading stack a couple of times because it was self-published. Within the Whole Host of Iowa Authors profiled here, several self-published good books. But overall, most self-published books would be wonderful first drafts. True, Gallup’s book can be improved, but then so can mine. So, if you shy away from self-published books, don’t do it with What about the Boy? A Father’s Pledge to His Disabled Son. Heads' Up, Eastern Iowa Eileen Boggess’s play, Mia the Melodramatic, will be performed at Davenport Junior Theatre the weekends Feb. 18-19 and 24-25. Eileen, a Davenport native, lives in Urbandale, and is a fellow member of PALS [Published Authors Liaison], an alliance of traditionally published authors in the Des Moines area. For more information about her play: www.davenportjuniortheatre.com and teboggess@msn.com What I'm Reading Now These Things Hidden by Iowa Author Heather Gudenkauf A few months back, we profiled Heather’s first book, The Weight of Silence, a mystery that climbed to #4 on The New York Times’ list. Now Heather’s back with a style patterned after Weight and with characters that mold themselves and Linden Falls, IA, into a secret that multiplies into many secrets. And they all revolve around an innocent little boy, an adoptive mother who loves him, the girl who tried to protect him and the two sisters who hold the key to all that is hidden. Told from the first-person perspectives of four people - Allison, Brynn, Claire and Charm-Heather’s given us another page-turner. Whenever I pick up a Heather Gudenkauf book, my world needs to step aside for a few days until I’ve finished reading the story. | |
| A Whole Host of Iowa Authors - Jo Kline Cebuhar, J.D. An ethical will is a map for your ethical journey: reflection on where you’ve been, what you’ve learned and looking forward to what you hope will be. While that’s an invaluable legacy, few are familiar with it. Now, thanks to Jo Kline Cebuhar’s So Grows the Tree-Creating an Ethical Will takes us into seemingly unfamiliar territory via the clearest of road maps. The end result may be the most important thing you’ll ever write. Click on Worth Reading for more. | ||
| Past Featured Iowa Authors | ||
| Growing Up Country by Carol Bodensteiner | ||
| Sailing Down the Moon Beam by Mary Gottschalk | ||
| Fairest of Them All by Jan Blazanin | ||
| The Just-Right, Perfect Present and The Pickle Patch Bathtub by Fran Kennedy | ||
| The Weight of Silence and These Things Hidden by Heather Gudenkauf | ||
| Frost, Stork and The McCloud Home for Wayward Girls by Wendy Del Sol WendyDelSol.com | ||
| Zakery’s Bridge: Children’s Journeys from Around the World by Kay Fenton Smith & Carol Roh Spaulding | ||
