Wednesday, September 05, 2012

What is Maryanne O'Hara reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Maryanne O'Hara, author of Cascade.

Her entry begins:
My favorite books of the past year have easily been Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, Nicole Krauss’s Great House, and David Grossman’s To the End of the Land—all of them masterful meditations on time and memory.

A recent gem I also really enjoyed was Jane Gardem’s Old Filth, about a British former Raj orphan looking back on his fractured life. The writing is precise and clear, the dialogue quite perfect; I found myself a bit heartbroken at...[read on]
About Cascade, from the publisher:
During the 1930s, an artist and reluctant new wife struggles to reconcile her heart's ambitions with the promises she has made.

Cascade, Massachusetts, 1935: Desdemona Hart Spaulding was an up and coming Boston artist when she abandoned her dreams of working in New York City, and married in haste to provide a home for her ailing father. Two months later, her father has died, and Dez is trapped in her marriage to Asa, a reliable and decent man, but one who is eager to start a family. Dez also stands to lose her father's legacy, the Cascade Shakespeare Theatre, as the Massachusetts Water Authority decides whether to flood Cascade to create a reservoir.

Amid this turmoil arrives Jacob Solomon, a fellow artist for whom Dez feels an immediate and strong attraction. As their relationship reaches a pivotal moment, a man is found dead and the town accuses Jacob, a Jewish outsider. But the tide turns when Dez's idea for a series of painted postcards is picked up by The American Sunday Standard and she abruptly finds herself back on the path to independence. New York City and a life with Jacob both beckon, but what will she have to give up along the way?
Visit Maryanne O'Hara's website and Facebook page, and view the Cascade trailer.

The Page 69 Test: Cascade.

Writers Read: Maryanne O'Hara.

--Marshal Zeringue