Additional information
by Molly Giles (Author)
WINNER of a Pushcart Prize, The Flannery O' Connor Prize and The Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize.
At forty-four, Kay Sorensen has quit drinking, smoking, and overeating, and she has almost quit reading self-help books about quitting drinking, smoking and overeating. She has divorced her deadbeat husband, finished college, and landed a job she loves directing a small branch of the county library. But Kay still has one unconquered addiction: she just can't say no to someone who needs her. So when her architect father insists he needs her to move back home and care-take the empty house she grew up in, Kay is forced to return to the site of her bitterly unhappy childhood, trying her best to ignore the ghostly presence of her dead mother and make a home for her and her son.But she soon finds herself returning to the patterns of her childhood, where she spent years trying to please her thankless father and placate her invalid mother. When her dogmatic, born-again brother arrives, along with a slew of men from her past all seeking a home, Kay is suddenly playing housewife and host to five men with needs and demands she is struggling to meet while consistently ignoring her own.
In order to find freedom and regain her selfhood, Kay must travel halfway across the world, finally face the chattering ghosts of her past, and break out of the mold that has been set for her by the men who have controlled her whole life.
Author Biography
MOLLY GILES is the award-winning author of six story collections and one novel. Most recently her title Wife With Knife, described as "her best collection ever" by Amy Tan, won a Pushcart Prize for its short story "Bad Dog" and the Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize. Rough Translations won The Flannery O'Connor Prize, the Boston Globe Award, and The Bay Area Book Reviewers' Award; Creek Walk won The Small Press Best Fiction Award, the California Commonwealth Silver Medal for Fiction, and was a New York Times Notable Book; Bothered won the Split Oak Press Flash Fiction Award; and All The Wrong Places won the Spokane Prize for Fiction. Her work has also earned The O. Henry Award and the Pushcart Prize, and she has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Marin Arts Council, and the Arkansas Arts Council.
