Thursday, April 09, 2020

What is Serena Burdick reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Serena Burdick, author of  The Girls with No Names.

Her entry begins:
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong

A book of original brilliance. A letter from a son to his mother, a mother who cannot read and therefore will never hear her son’s words, which give those words a freedom one rarely has when confronting the ones who loved and tormented us the most. Vuong speaks truths so deep and painful and beautiful it tears at your heart, his prose unfolding with unprecedented skill in a language all his own. The story, while simple and real, the telling of childhood and a coming of age, is also...[read on]
About The Girls with No Names, from the publisher:
A beautiful tale of hope, courage, and sisterhood—inspired by the real House of Mercy and the girls confined there for daring to break the rules.

Growing up in New York City in the 1910s, Luella and Effie Tildon realize that even as wealthy young women, their freedoms come with limits. But when the sisters discover a shocking secret about their father, Luella, the brazen elder sister, becomes emboldened to do as she pleases. Her rebellion comes with consequences, and one morning Luella is mysteriously gone.

Effie suspects her father has sent Luella to the House of Mercy and hatches a plan to get herself committed to save her sister. But she made a miscalculation, and with no one to believe her story, Effie’s own escape seems impossible—unless she can trust an enigmatic girl named Mable. As their fates entwine, Mable and Effie must rely on their tenuous friendship to survive.

Home for Unwanted Girls meets The Dollhouse in this atmospheric, heartwarming story that explores not only the historical House of Mercy, but the lives—and secrets—of the girls who stayed there.
Visit Serena Burdick's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Girls with No Names.

Writers Read: Serena Burdick.

--Marshal Zeringue