Tuesday, November 11, 2014

What is Kaya McLaren reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Kaya McLaren, author of The Firelight Girls.

Her entry begins:
Mexico has been calling me for a couple years and in mid-October, I answered the call. I packed my things, loaded what I could not live without into my Xterra, and spent six days driving south from Washington State all the way down to Todos Santos, which is near the tip of the Baja Peninsula on the Pacific Side. Last year when Mexico called, I picked up the phone and sort of put her on hold. I came down for a glorious week and a half, most of which was spent sea kayaking the Isla Espiritu Santo in the Sea of Cortez near La Paz and it was there that I began reading Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros. Cisneros has long been one of...[read on]
About The Firelight Girls, from the publisher:
The summers you spend at summer camp are indelibly etched on your heart. But what happens when the camp you love is about to close? Can you ever really say goodbye to the place that made you who you are? These are the questions that plagues Ethel, the seventy-year-old former camp director who is nursing a broken heart after losing the love of her life as she now faces the impending closure of the camp on Lake Wenatchee that she called home. It's also a question that inspires change in forty-year-old Shannon, who spent the summers of her youth as a vibrant, capable camp counselor and is now directionless after watching her career implode. And there's Laura, who has lost all intimacy with her husband and doesn't know if she can save what seems to be gone forever. Finally, Ruby, who betrayed Ethel years ago and hasn't spoken to her since, hopes this will be her chance to make amends. When the four women learn that a homeless teen has been hiding at camp, they realize camp is something much more immediate for all: survival.

And so the three generations of women search for a way to save the place that saved them all, finding in the process a way back to themselves and each other in The Firelight Girls, Kaya McLaren's novel of love and loss, heartbreak and healing.
Visit Kaya McLaren's website.

Writers Read: Kaya McLaren.

--Marshal Zeringue