Thursday, April 27, 2017

What is Ellen Meeropol reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Ellen Meeropol, author of Kinship of Clover.

Her entry begins:
I’m reading Earth As It Is by Jan Maher and I’m enthralled. Set in the 1930’s, the story is about Charlie, a heterosexual cross-dresser. I was initially interested mostly because my second novel, On Hurricane Island, has a heterosexual cross-dresser, and I was curious to learn more. I was quickly drawn into Charlie’s early struggles to understand his desire to dress in women’s clothes - hardly acceptable in small-town Texas society - and his transformation into...[read on]
About Kinship of Clover, from the publisher:
From the author of House Arrest and On Hurricane Island comes a thrilling new activist novel that begs the question, “How far is too far?”

He was nine when the vines first wrapped themselves around him and burrowed into his skin. Now a college botany major, Jeremy is desperately looking for a way to listen to the plants and stave off their extinction. But when the grip of the vines becomes too intense and Health Services starts asking questions, he flees to Brooklyn, where fate puts him face to face with a group of climate-justice activists who assure him they have a plan to save the planet, and his plants. As the group readies itself to make a big Earth Day splash, Jeremy soon realizes these eco-terrorists’ devotion to activism might have him—and those closest to him—tangled up in more trouble than he was prepared to face. With the help of a determined, differently abled flame from his childhood, Zoe; her deteriorating, once–rabble-rousing grandmother; and some shocking and illuminating revelations from the past, Jeremy must weigh completing his mission to save the plants against protecting the ones he loves, and confront the most critical question of all: how do you stay true to the people you care about while trying to change the world?
Visit Ellen Meeropol's website.

See Meeropol's list of five political novels to change the world.

The Page 69 Test: Kinship of Clover.

Writers Read: Ellen Meeropol.

--Marshal Zeringue