Newfangled

By Debra Monroe

Book Overview

From award-winning writer Debra Monroe comes a funny and poignant story of a woman's quest to find a physical and emotional home.
Maddie, a refugee from two marriages, wanders from place to place seeking new options and new connections. She eventually settles in a cozy old neighborhood in Tucson, gets a job, and contemplates her life so far: a mother who's been missing for two decades, a father she rarely sees, two sisters married to the same men for fifteen years, and a circle of quirky, spiteful, but loyal friends. Just as she's trying to decide whether she's actually "at home" in Tucson, she receives a phone call that sends her on another journey -- one that takes her both physically and emotionally into the past and affords her a glimpse of a newfangled future.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684851970
• ISBN13: 9780684851976
• Release Date: February 2000
• Publisher: Touchstone Books
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A kaleidescope - dazzling yet it never settles

The story of Maidie Bonasso's life resembles a kaleidescope - the imagery is hard-edged yet dazzling, and while the pictures change smoothly, the narrative never settles into one pattern. Maidie's life is a collection of memories saved from her constant moves, which leave behind estranged parents, remote sisters and two ex-husbands. Currently working in Tuscon as the curator of the Museum of Domestic History and Home Economy (which functions better as metaphor than as museum), Maidie begins to catalog her life : abandonment--by mother ; neglect--by first husband ; verbal abuse--by second husband ; happiness--with boyfirend--current. But although Maidie thinks often about her past, it isn't until the last third of the novel that she confronts the fragments of her life and visits her family. The book is a wry and honest look at the newfangled forms of family created by geographic dislocations and divorce, by the Flannery O'Connor award winning author of "The Sources of Trouble" and "A Wild Cold State".