People who haven't been recognized, like immigrants and women; how fiction can reveal the truth of family stories; imagination as a problem solver.
When a book leaves my computer for the world, it belongs to readers, and I love hearing how they make it theirs. How people read, what stories mine inspired, what my book might have prompted them to do or write--I love talking about this. Book groups are fabulous, because they've read the whole book so we can talk about all the spoilers!
Meeting readers over the years has changed how I think about writing. Now, I feel like I'm having a conversation on the page.
American Ending is narrated by Yelena, the first American born to her Old Believer Russian Orthodox parents, who are building a life in a Pennsylvania Appalachian town in the first decades of the twentieth century. Here, boys quit school for the coal mines, and girls are married off at fourteen, only to give birth to more babies than they can feed. Yelena craves a different path. Will she find the American Ending she imagines, or will a dreaded Russian ending be her fate?
"The old and forever new story of immigration. Did Mary Kay Zuravleff time travel to write this book? It's as if she truly lived in the past to bring us a novel of the moment."
—Jane Hamilton, author of The Excellent Lombards
All it takes is a quarter to change pediatric psychiatrist Dr. Owen Lerner's life. When the coin he's feeding into a parking meter is struck by lightning, Lerner survives, except that now all he wants to do is barbecue. That bolt of lightning that lifts Lerner into the air sends the entire Lerner clan into free fall in this book, which depicts family-on-family pain with generosity and devastating humor, exploring how much we are each allowed to change within a family―and without.
"This is a family novel for smart people."
—Washington Post, Notable Book
The Bowl Is Already Broken is a calamitous, generous novel set in a Smithsonian-ish museum in Washington, DC. Promise Whittaker, the acting director of the National Museum of Asian Art, is pregnant again, and that's just the start of her troubles. The previous director resigned suddenly and headed out to the Taklamakan Desert. Her favorite curator has dropped a Chinese porcelain down the museum's marble stairs. Another colleague, desperate for a son, has embezzled museum funds to pay for fertility treatments. And her handsome, elusive ancillary director is clearly up to no good. What could she save if she tried—and how hard should she try?
"A tart, affectionate satire of the museum world's bickering and scheming."
—New York Times