Maybe it’s the dark cold winters and the subsequently long hours spent indoors but a whole lot of writing is going on in the state of Wisconsin. And a lot of it is quality fiction. Two authors new to me live in Wisconsin − Jesse Lee Kercheval author of The Alice Stories, (connected stories poignantly written about the domestic life of one young family through the years); Space: A Memoir and the novel Museum of Happiness, lives in Madison; and Lauren Fox, author of Still Life with Husband, a humorous novel of marriage, lives in Milwaukee.
Wisconsin is the locale for three additional novels by authors who have obviously spent considerable time there. The Dive from Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer acutely describes one young woman’s dilemma over her impending marriage to a suddenly gravely injured fiancé. In You’re Not You by Michelle Wildgen, a young college student cares and becomes emotionally drawn to a young married woman with ALS. In Lady of the Snakes, author Rachel Pastan describes a scholarly new mother who struggles with her subject – 19th century Russian literature, specifically the diaries of the wife of novelist Grigory Karkov – and the demands of family life including a toddler daughter.
I invite you to come inside and visit Wisconsin and its fertile literary landscape. ~ Susan
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