Women & Children First

Description

On a spring day in 1968, eight-year-old Isabel Gold prepares tea for her mother, certain she will drink it and recover from her mysterious sadness. But the tea remains untouched. Not long after, her mother takes her own life.

Struggling to understand the ghost her mother left behind, Isabel grows up trying on new identities. Her yearning for an emotional connection finds her falling in and out of love with various women, but it is not until Isabel learns how to reach deep within herself that she begins to listen to the truths of her own heart.

About the Author

Stacey D'erasmo was a senior editor at the Voice Literary Supplement for seven years. She has written articles for The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, The Nation, Details, and New York Newsday. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow and the recipient of the Patty Willrich Fellowship at Stanford University, and she was the first fiction editor for Artforum. She lives in New York.

Praise for Tea…

NewsdayFlawless.

Maureen CorriganNPRTEA's satisfying taste lingers.

San Francisco ChronicleIntimations of greatness....Written with a strength and daring that makes it a breathtaking pleasure.

Michael Cunninghamauthor of The HoursA pure and profound book; a ravishing book. After I'd finished reading it I couldn't start reading anything else for a while -- it just didn't seem necessary. Stacey D'Erasmo is, simply, the real thing, and this book is a work of art.

Dorothy Allisonauthor of Bastard Out of CarolinaStacey D'Erasmo is a terrific writer.

The New York Times Book ReviewD'Erasmo's novel is an unpretentious attack on unsophisticated novelizing. Its sober insight is that the novelist can't do better than words, so the words should be as honest as possible.

The New YorkerA memorable debut novel...barbed with bitter humor.

New York NewsdayI have read a whole lot of contemporary first novels and there's not one I would have characterized as flawless until I read Tea....D'Erasmo seems to have entered a new territory, where our literature may finally have achieved that sophistication to allow us to stop acting shocked whenever we discover another Ameri can childhood that is not as tritely cute as a Norman Rockwell painting.

Ms.[A] deeply appealing story...Beautiful prose....D'Erasmo creates a world that is both highly recognizable and exceptional....Any reader who has felt both lost and found in the space between straight and gay will be moved by the achingly charming depiction of Isabel coming out.

Los Angeles TimesD'Erasmo expertly evokes everything it is to be twenty-two, and, throughout Tea, there's a refreshingly old-fashioned concern with the life-and-death stakes of self-realization.