Above the Thunder
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Above the Thunder' tells the mesmerizing story of three generations of women confronting the emotional turmoil of abandonment, and the men with whom their lives converge. Young and ambitious Anna puts her career on hold to support her husband through medical school, only to find out she’s pregnant when it’s her turn. Troubled and difficult from the start, Anna’s daughter, Poppy, hasn’t been home since she drove away with the man who came to buy the family’s VW bus. After a twelve-year absence, Poppy begs to reunite with her now widowed mother, only to disappear again, leaving her mysterious and wildly imaginative young daughter, Flynn, in Anna’s care. This is also the story of Jack and Stuart, a couple struggling with commitment despite their love for one another. When Jack and Stuart meet Anna in a support group, they feel a connection that eventually leads them to form a loving, if unlikely, family. Gorgeously written and imbued with both wisdom and humor, 'Above the Thunder' reminds us that created families can be every bit as vital as the families into which we are born.
About the Author: Renee Manfredi received her MFA from Indiana University, a fellowship from The National Endowment for the Arts, and was a regional winner of Granta’s Best American Novelists Under 40. Her story collection, 'Where Love Leaves Us', won the Iowa Short Fiction award. Her short stories have been published in 'The Mississippi Review', 'The Iowa Review', 'The Georgia Review', and 'The Pushcart Prize Anthology', and featured in NPR’s 'Selected Shorts' series. Manfredi is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Alaska. 'Above the Thunder' is her first novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Manfredi charts the disappointments and surprises of the human heart in her stunning debut novel, a complex ensemble character study that revolves around Anna Brinkman, a widowed, 50-ish Boston medical technologist and academic. Anna's busy life is transformed when her estranged daughter an erratic heroin addict calls from Alaska and asks to pay an extended visit. Brinkman is already struggling with her responsibilities as a mentor for a support group of AIDS patients, but she becomes totally overwhelmed when her daughter's husband arrives alone and asks Anna to help him raise the couple's wildly imaginative but troubled 10-year-old daughter, Flynn. In a parallel subplot, Anna forges an unlikely friendship with a hostile HIV-positive patient named Jack, who has betrayed his longtime lover, Stuart, by giving in to his wide-ranging erotic appetites with other men. The literary glue that holds this disparate ensemble together is the remarkable Flynn, who loves boxing and Irish dancing, believes in reincarnation and hears spirit voices. She quickly becomes "the dark heart of the nucleus in the cell of Anna's life" and captures Jack's heart in the process, so much so that Anna ends up moving to Maine with them both to form a unique family that eventually includes one of the other characters. To describe the novel as a brilliant, issue-oriented drama shortchanges Manfredi's accomplishments; the medical writing recalls the early works of Ethan Canin, and the combination of smooth storytelling, compassionate and probing narration and imaginative plotting makes for a heady blend, despite a difficult, tragic ending.
