Tuesday, May 29, 2018

What is Susan Kietzman reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Susan Kietzman, author of It Started in June.

Her entry begins:
I read Stewart O’Nan’s Last Night at the Lobster several years ago, and I have no idea why it has taken me so long to circle back to the work of such an insightful and witty author. The Odds (A Love Story) is about Marion and Art Fowler, who find themselves in a desperate financial situation and on the brink of divorce after thirty years of marriage. Against their better judgment, they drain their bank account and take a bus to Niagara Falls – in a last ditch effort at rekindling their love (well, for Art anyway) and winning enough money at the casino to move them out of the red and into the black.

The Odds, like The Lobster, is a look at how regular people...[read on]
About It Started in June, from the publisher:
Susan Kietzman’s engrossing and thought-provoking novel explores the choices and revelations that come with life’s most unexpected events.

Grace Trumbull’s after work drink with Bradley Hanover, a handsome younger colleague, on a warm summer night turns into an impulsive, intimate encounter. After a few weeks of exhilarating secret dates, Grace—forty-two and divorced—realizes she’s pregnant.

For Grace, whose estranged mother refers to her own teenage pregnancy as her biggest mistake, the prospect of parenthood is daunting. She’s just been made vice president of a media relations company and is childfree by choice. Still, something deeper than her fear makes her want to keep the baby. She knows she can be a better, more capable parent than her mother was to her.

As months pass and seasons change, Grace questions her decision to include Bradley in her plans. But they continue to navigate their complicated relationship, each struggling with what it means to make a commitment to someone. Most importantly, Grace begins trusting her instincts—maternal and otherwise—finding courage that will guide her through an uncertain future ripe with new possibilities...
Visit Susan Kietzman's website.

The Page 69 Test: Every Other Wednesday.

The Page 69 Test: It Started in June.

Writers Read: Susan Kietzman.

--Marshal Zeringue