All tagged marriage

My Murder

My Murder

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

What if science could bring people back to life complete with memories created prior to premature death? Surely such abilities would be fraught with ethical questions and ramifications. What if a serially killer targeted young women alone in the dark? What would the tipping point be at which the public would rally for these women to be brought back? These are some of the questions from which Katie Williams’ novel My Murder (2023) stems. Williams’ novel takes readers to a not-so-distant future when technology—medical and otherwise—changes certain fundamental certainties in life. Most notably, My Murder is set during a time when death need not be forever.

Damnation Spring

Damnation Spring

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Some books zoom in on a place and its local culture, bound to the setting both in terms of geography and time in ways that pull the reader in. Ash Davidson’s debut novel Damnation Spring (2021) does just that. Readers cozy up with the book firmly in the 21st-century, but within sentences Davidson’s prose transports them to 1977 amid the coastal redwoods and gritty logging families of Northern California. As anyone with knowledge of 1970s logging communities knows, this book deals with some very difficult themes (things like premature death, poverty, miscarriage, and adultery to name a few). Rural towns like the one readers come to know intimately in Damnation Spring, witnessed major cultural upheaval during the 1970s. Growing public environmentalist sentiment and dwindling old growth logging opportunities led to heated conflicts which often pitted neighbor against neighbor. It is a conflict that continues to play out in logging

And Yet: Poems

And Yet: Poems

Chris Mathers Jackson
Poetry

It is precisely these sorts of modern mothering moments, among other aspects of 21st-century womanhood, that inspire the poetry of Kate Baer. And Yet: Poems (2022) is her second full-length book of poetry, and it goes on sale on November 8. As with her first collection, What Kind of Woman (2020), which became and instant number one New York Times bestseller, And Yet scrutinizes what it is to be a white, American, middle class woman at this moment. Middle age, parenting, marriage, self-image, sex, health: all of these have their moments under the bright lights that are Baer’s poems.