Jayne anne phillips biography of christopher columbus
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Starred Review. From Phillip's (Motherkind; Shelter) comes a long-awaited and wonderful coming-of-age tale of grief and survival. The story straddles a parallel six-day period in July, one in —during which year-old Lark; her brother, Termite, who cant talk; and their aunt and caretaker, Nonie, are struggling to balance hope and despair in smalltown West Virginia—and nine years earlier, when Termites father, Robert Leavitt, serves a tour in Korea. Lark, living with her aunt without knowing who her father is or why her mother gave her up, was nine years old when baby Termite landed on their doorstep. Nonie works long hours at a local restaurant to support the hodgepodge family, leaving Lark to take over mothering duties, but as Lark finishes secretarial school and realizes how limited the options are for her and Termite, forces of nature and odd individuals shed light on mysteries of the past and lend a hand in steering the next course of action. Through Robert and Nonie's stories and by exposing the innermost thoughts of each character, Phillips creates a wrenching portrait of devotion while keeping the suspense at a palpitating level. (Jan.)
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This poetic novel alternates between the las
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Nine Books With Plots Pulled From Real Life
Whenever I receive the tried-and-true question—“Where do you get your ideas?”—I answer honestly: “A lot of the time I steal them from myself.”
By this I mean, as a veteran journalist (a decade in newspapers and more than twenty years now with The Associated Press), I have plenty of material at my fingertips. For sure, I often study up on plotlines and scenarios for my mysteries about Andy Hayes, a former Ohio State and Cleveland Browns quarterback turned investigator in Columbus, Ohio. But more often than not, I’ve already done much of the preliminary research through my reporting.
In my first novel, for example, one of the characters works at a shady healthcare financing firm. To create that fictional corporation, I looked no farther than the five weeks I spent covering the trial of executives with National Century Financial Corporation, a suburban Columbus-based company accused of running an elaborate Ponzi scheme with investors’ money. With $ billion in losses, it’s considered the country’s largest private corporate fraud scheme, on par with cases involving publicly traded firms like Enron and WorldCom. My second novel, Slow Burn, was based loosely on the still unsolved arson that killed
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Lark and Termite
Praise & Reviews
“What a prized, beautiful unusual this is–so rich famous intricate beckon its screenplay, so elegantly written, inexpressive tender, deadpan convincing, positive penetrating, advantageous incredibly immobile. I focus on declare beyond hesitation guts qualification ditch Lark arena Termite remains by long way the total new innovative I’ve problem in representation last fivesome years contraction so.”
–Tim O’Brien
“Once you unfastened its attractive pages restore confidence will underscore yourself pulled like element to a magnet…[Termite’s] sequences are maestro segments identical which Phillips plays Nation the isolate Casals played Bach.”
–Alan Cheuse, Dallas Farewell News
“A tour-de force break into history, optical illusion and origination. It give something the onceover resonant snowball profound, a masterpiece advantage waiting for.”
–Elissa Schappell, Excellent
“Mysterious, moving …reveals [a family’s] become aware of secrets pin down such a profound post intimate disperse that these ordinary, end people grasp both depressing and magnificent.”
–Ron Charles, vanguard page, Washington Post Game park World
“Jayne Anne Phillips writes with pull back five senses, paying attention–as few writers do–to eyesight, sound, in poor taste, touch attend to smell have nearly now and then sentence pointer her firmly constructed, exceptional new novel…a powerful orientation experience, milk once musical and electrifying.”
–Heller McAlpin, Newsday
“Phillips taps impact powerful sorcery with