Back in March, I issued a buzz alert for Alice Bliss
, the debut novel of playwright Laura Harrington. The book grew out of Harrington's off-Broadway musical "Alice Unwrapped". Expanding the one-woman show to a book gave Harrington an opportunity to explore the the idea of war as seen from the homefront, including the loss of a father. (Harrington cites the post-war PTSD of her father, a WWII navigator/ bombardier, as one of the greatest mysteries and inspirations of her life.)
Alice Bliss is now in bookstores, book clubs and beach bags everywhere. Harrington's writing is simply beautiful. Fluid, page-turning, paced exactly right. The story flows, the protagonist grows, secondary characters blossom fully. It's the quintessential multi-Kleenex summer house read.
Per the PR:
, the debut novel of playwright Laura Harrington. The book grew out of Harrington's off-Broadway musical "Alice Unwrapped". Expanding the one-woman show to a book gave Harrington an opportunity to explore the the idea of war as seen from the homefront, including the loss of a father. (Harrington cites the post-war PTSD of her father, a WWII navigator/ bombardier, as one of the greatest mysteries and inspirations of her life.) Alice Bliss
is now in bookstores, book clubs and beach bags everywhere. Harrington's writing is simply beautiful. Fluid, page-turning, paced exactly right. The story flows, the protagonist grows, secondary characters blossom fully. It's the quintessential multi-Kleenex summer house read. Per the PR:
When Alice Bliss learns that her father, Matt, is being deployed to Iraq, she's heartbroken. Alice idolizes her father, loves working beside him in their garden, accompanying him on the occasional roofing job, playing baseball. When he ships out, Alice is faced with finding a way to fill the emptiness he has left behind.
Matt will miss seeing his daughter blossom from a tomboy into a full-blown teenager. Alice will learn to drive, join the track team, go to her first dance, and fall in love, all while trying to be strong for her mother, Angie, and take care of her precocious little sister, Ellie. But the smell of Matt is starting to fade from his blue shirt that Alice wears everyday, and the phone calls are never long enough.
Alice Bliss is a profoundly moving coming-of-age novel about love and its many variations--the support of a small town looking after its own; love between an absent father and his daughter; the complicated love between an adolescent girl and her mother; and an exploration of new love with the boy-next-door. These characters' struggles amidst uncertain times echo our own, lending the novel an immediacy and poignancy that is both relevant and real. At once universal and very personal, Alice Bliss is a transforming story about those who are left at home during wartime, and a teenage girl bravely facing the future.
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