Literature, Fiction
ISBN: 9781732848023 (Print) 9781732848030 (eBook) $14.00 (Print); $9.99 (eBook) Paperback, eBook About the AuthorMARIA ESPINOSA is the author of five novels, including Longing, which won the 1996 American Book Award; two collections of poetry, one of which was praised by Anaïs Nin as being “very sincere and direct and rich in feeling”; and a translation of George Sand’s Lélia. The 2010 winner of the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, she has taught creative writing and contemporary literature at New College of California and English as a Second Language at City College of San Francisco. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and has one daughter. Her website is www.mariaespinosa.com.
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Suburban Souls
Against the vibrant and liberated backdrop of 1970’s San Francisco, a husband and wife—both Jewish immigrants indelibly traumatized by their childhoods in Nazi Germany—face the turbulence of an increasingly sterile marriage. Saul, an emotionally withdrawn scientist, escapes into New Age mysticism with Shivaya, a self-styled clairvoyant Danish healer. Gerda drifts in and out of psychiatric care as her loosening grip on reality leaves its mark on their teenage daughter, Hannah. In this unflinching portrait of a woman's downward spiral into the nightmare of modern domesticity, Maria Espinosa weaves a deceptively simple tale about the terror of abandonment and the mysterious nature of suffering.
Buy on Amazon, Powell's, or Barnes & Noble. -Advance Acclaim for Suburban Souls
“The first words peel away any reasonable exterior this family might have . . . Espinosa’s perfect-pitch writing doesn’t allow sugarcoating. Our own dark places recognize the depth of human difficulties, perhaps as never before . . . ” - Clive Matson, author Hello, Paradise. Paradise, Goodbye and Let the Crazy Child Write! “A moving novel telling a story of generations of suffering caused by the Holocaust.” - Susan Griffin, author of A Chorus of Stones “Terse, essential, smart . . . Maria Espinosa deftly exposes the inner fears and illusions of souls scarred by inferno fires of Nazi concentration camps—or of those who are now caught in the monotony of life in Suburbia U.S.A. A tour de force.” - Lucha Corpi, author of Eulogy for a Brown Angel and Palabras de mediodia “A psychologically intense portrait of the survivors of World War II . . . Their repressed guilt and longings explode . . . as they strive to make peace with their traumatic memories.” -- Rosa Martha Villarreal, author of The Stillness of Love and Exile |