The Way The Family Got Away

In Michael Kimball's chilling first novel, The Way the Family Got Away, two siblings, a girl aged three and boy aged seven, try to comprehend the death of their infant brother. The story takes place on the road, as their family runs from their grief on a long and painful journey to their grandfather's house, slowly selling off all of their worldly possessions as they go. The children develop careful coping mechanisms to escape the grief and instability of their lives. The girl finds a new family in her dolls and plays out her own pain in the lives she creates for them; the boy makes a meticulous inventory of their trip, cataloging the names of the towns they drive through, the things they leave behind in each of them. Writing through the eyes and language of the children, Kimball tries to make sense of loss, love, and death in this poetic and profound work.

Generations of the Maguire family have survived the odds through sheer hard won resilience navigating world and life-changing events while Mary struggles with her own challenges passed on in the family way. As a girl made fatherless aged only five months old at the beginning of a new century, Mary Maguire was brought up to be a good Catholic girl, or so Annie, her Irish Famine surviving granny thought. Her mammy Caitlin erred a little too, as a burdened woman will do when coping with nine children proves too much. With sisters Nora and Cait carrying on the family baby-making tradition beyond being pioneer female strikers and brothers Frank, Bernie, Patrick and Seamus conscripted into WWI with some not returning and others not as they were when they left, Mary feels cast adrift. The thing was, the priest wasn't as God-fearing as he claimed; a family member couldn't take no for an answer and the older Irish rebel uncle never even asked the question. On finding herself in a tricky situation, Mary discovers a way to fight back through her heritage from the old country with Cunamm Na mBan in 1920's Glasgow before winding her way from Scotland to America and back to Ireland where it all began to find what was lost and understand what we can never lose.

Unmarried mothers, absent fathers, orphaned children - Jane Robinson's In the Family Way is a truly gripping book about long-buried secrets, family bonds and unlikely heroes. Only a generation or two ago, illegitimacy was one of the most shameful things that could happen in a family. Unmarried mothers were considered immoral, single fathers feckless and bastard children inherently defective. They were hidden away from friends and relations as guilty secrets, punished by society and denied their place in the family tree. Today, the concept of illegitimacy no longer exists in law, and babies' parents are as likely to be unmarried as married. This revolution in public opinion makes it easy to forget what it was really like to give birth, or be born, out of wedlock in the years between World War One and the dawn of the Permissive Age. By speaking to those involved - many of whom have never felt able to talk about their experiences before - Jane Robinson reveals a story not only of shame and appalling prejudice, but also of triumph and the every-day strength of the human spirit. In the Family Way tells secrets kept for entire lifetimes and rescues from the shadows an important part of all our family histories. In it we hear long-silent voices from the workhouse, the Magdalene Laundry or the distant mother-and-baby home. Anonymous childhoods are recalled, spent in the care of Dr Barnardo or a Child Migration scheme halfway across the world. There are sorrowful stories in this book, but it is also about hope: about supportive families who defied social expectations by welcoming 'love-children' home, or those who were parted and are now reconciled. Most of all, In the Family Way is about finally telling the truth. Praise for Bluestockings 'A gem of a book. Social history of the best kind' Sunday Times 'Fascinating. Inspiring. Impassioned and wonderfully entertaining' Scotsman Jane Robinson was born in Edinburgh and brought up in North Yorkshire. After reading English at Somerville College, Oxford, she became an antiquarian book dealer, and later a writer and lecturer. In the Family Way is her ninth book, and like her previous work, including the acclaimed Bluestockings and A Force to Be Reckoned With, it confirms her as one of our most engaging and original social historians. Jane lives near Oxford with her husband and two sons.

In Daughters and Granddaughters of Farmworkers, Barbara Wells examines the work and family lives of Mexican American women in a community near the U.S.-Mexican border in California’s Imperial County. Decades earlier, their Mexican parents and grandparents had made the momentous decision to migrate to the United States as farmworkers. This book explores how that decision has worked out for these second- and third-generation Mexican Americans. Wells provides stories of the struggles, triumphs, and everyday experiences of these women. She analyzes their narratives on a broad canvas that includes the social structures that create the barriers, constraints, and opportunities that have shaped their lives. The women have constructed far more settled lives than the immigrant generation that followed the crops, but many struggle to provide adequately for their families. These women aspire to achieve the middle-class lives of the American Dream. But upward mobility is an elusive goal. The realities of life in a rural, agricultural border community strictly limit social mobility for these descendants of immigrant farm laborers. Reliance on family networks is a vital strategy for meeting the economic challenges they encounter. Wells illustrates clearly the ways in which the “long shadow” of farm work continues to permeate the lives and prospects of these women and their families.

Your Story Matters presents a dynamic and spiritually formative process for understanding and redeeming the past in order to live well in the present and into the future. Leslie Leyland Fields has used and taught this practical and inspiring writing process for decades, helping people from all walks of life to access memory and sift through the truth of their stories. This is not just a book for writers. Each one of us has a story, and understanding God's work in our stories is a vital part of our faith. Through the spiritual practice of writing, we can "remember" his acts among us, "declare his glory among the nations," and pass on to others what we have witnessed of God in this life: the mysterious, the tragic, the miraculous, the ordinary. With a companion video curriculum from RightNow Media, this is a "why not" book as opposed to a "how to" book. Leslie asks each of us an important question: "Why not learn to tell your story, in the context of the grander story of God?"

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY is the first novel in a fantastic new series called THE HEN NIGHT PROPHECIES, following the fortunes of five different girls, each given their own puzzling prophecy at a friend's hen night... Zoe Piper adores her four best friends - Fern, Libby, Charlotte and Priya - so is thrilled when they can all make it to her hen night, where one of the girls arranges for a tarot-card reader to give them a reading individually. Afterwards, each one stumbles out a little dazed, perplexed by how spookily accurate the reader was, but each one keeps quiet about their own readings. In each of the five volumes of THE HEN NIGHT PROPHECIES we learn how their prophecies come true - this first book follows the fortunes of Fern, who is told that she has already met The One, but let him go...