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Stephanie Gertler lives in New York with her husband, three children, and five dogs. Her second novel, The Puzzle Bark Tree will be available in paperback in June and her third novel, Drifting, will be published by Dutton in September. She is at work on her fourth novel. Her official website is http://www.StephanieGertler.com.
• More Stephanie Gertler
• 2002 Fiction Debut Author Roundtable
The Puzzle Bark Tree
When Grace Hammond Barnett's parents die suddenly, she is bequeathed a lakeside house she never knew existed. Leaving her city life behind, she travels to the house for refuge-and meets a man who helps her unravel a devastating secret buried in her past...
• Read a Review and Excerpt
Stephanie Gertler's Summer Reading List
The Four Corners
by Diane Freund
When her mother has a nervous breakdown, 10-year-old Rainey and her four siblings are left in the care of their flamboyant Aunt Merle, who comes up from New York City with her wild daughter, Joan, and her peculiar son, Wayne. Drinking her morning beer ("for courage"), Merle chafes under her domestic responsibilities and spends her time chain-smoking, dispensing brutally funny asides, and flirting with a handsome neighbor. She is convinced it's the children who have driven her sister crazy and has no qualms about telling them so. It's Rainey, still innocent but desperate to make sense of the adult world, who narrates the events of the year her mother remains hospitalized; she takes it all in--small pleasures, such as ice-skating on the pond, and harrowing moments, as when Joan is struck by lightning. Freund has set up an interesting dynamic here--it's Rainey who will win readers' sympathies with her desperate need for attention and love, but it's the flippant Merle, not so likable, whose dire worldview proves heartbreakingly accurate. A striking debut.
My comments: This debut novel got such outstanding reviews and I love books about children as they attempt to fathom and unravel adult worlds. I find this intriguing...And because my fist novel debuted just three years ago, I have a loyalty to first novelists!
The Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd
Fourteen-year-old Lily Owen lives on a peach farm in South Carolina with her bitter father and tries to remember her mother, Deborah, who died when Lily was around four. The story her father tells her, that she must not discuss, is that Lily was the one who accidentally shot and killed her own mother. Lily cannot remember the horrible incident but spends hours trying to remember (mostly through fantasy) how her mother might have loved her. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back. When Lily's beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of--Tiburon, South Carolina--determined to find out more about her mother.
My comments: I've actually read this book -- in two days and loved it. I plan to read it again this summer and for those of you who haven't read it yet - please do. Although narrated in Lily's voice, the book is filled with wisdom.
The Guardian
by Nicholas Sparks
On Christmas Eve, Julie Barenson, 25 years old and newly widowed, finds an unexpected present-a Great Dane pup that her late husband, Jim, had arranged for her to receive after he died from a brain tumor. On that melodramatic note, bestselling author Sparks (Nights in Rodanthe) begins his latest love story, one in which he combines elements of romance with those of a thriller. Julie's new dog, Singer, turns out to be a better judge of character than she, which is unfortunate because the dog nearly gives away the book's ending when he growls warily at Richard Franklin, the new man in Julie's life. On the other hand, the pooch loves to be around Mike Harris, Jim's best friend, who has grown to love Julie. Richard's increasingly bizarre behavior causes Julie to break up with him, and his subsequent stalker tactics make for compelling action, especially when he plots to destroy the budding romance between Julie and Mike. But the writing is lax at best, with multiple point-of-view shifts in the course of one page or even one paragraph. Secondary characters are two-dimensional, such as Pete, the dumb cop who is taken in by the scheming Richard, and Andrea, Julie's co-worker at the local hair salon, a low-class broad from the wrong side of the tracks who might as well have "next victim" tattooed on her forehead. Yet Sparks fans clamor for his brand of love story, and, with the added punch of suspense, this one will be another bestseller.
My comments: Say what you will about Sparks, but he's a natural-born storyteller. The writing isn't always the greatest but the stories always capture me. Romance and reality -- great combinations. My favorite still remains The Notebook....
All He Ever Wanted
by Anita Shreve
Boldly plotted and inventively told, Shreve's latest novel is further proof that she is a natural-born storyteller with a shrewd sense of how to shape her material to best appeal to the commercial market. This is a story of obsessive love spanning the years 1899-1916 and told in the somewhat stilted and formal language of a pompous English professor. Nicholas Van Tassel first meets Etna Bliss while escaping from a hotel fire, a conflagration that serves to foreshadow their relationship. He pursues her relentlessly, ascertaining that she is financially dependent on her sister's family. Sensing her restlessness, he proposes marriage, deceiving himself about her feelings for him. The bargain they have struck comes back to haunt them when Nicholas discovers that his wife, unbeknownst to him, has inherited a painting, sold it, and used the proceeds to buy herself a small house, where she can find some small measure of freedom. Considering this act the height of betrayal, Nicholas sets in motion a series of disastrous events. Shreve artfully explores the gamut of emotions provoked by passion, from selfless generosity to base pettiness, subtly tracing the bargains people make and the price exacted, all in the name of love.
My comments: Shreve has never disappointed me. I've read every one of her novels and loved them all. Favorite so far is The Weight of Water -- and looking forward to this one as well.
Second Glance
by Jodi Picoult
Ghosts and ghost hunters collide in this compelling tale of the paranormal set in Vermont's green mountains. When the patriarch of the Abenaki Indian tribe that was nearly eradicated by that state's eugenics project in the 1930s encounters Ross Wakeman, the miraculous survivor of several attempted suicides who wants nothing more than to be reunited with the woman he loved and lost, they set in motion a chain of events that will unravel an ancient murder and lead to a second chance at life and love for the victim's descendants. Picoult, author of Salem Falls, brings the past alive and peoples it with a cast of extraordinarily well-realized characters whose reach into the future touches the lives of a dying boy, a frightened girl, and their mothers--two women who've given up on love until the revenants stirred up by a plan to develop an ancient burial ground show them what they're missing. Second Glance is an intricate and suspenseful ghost story that enchants and illuminates all the way to its powerful conclusion.
My comments: One of my favorite contemporary authors, Picoult has never disappointed me either. One of the best books I ever read (and read it twice) is Harvesting the Heart. Can't wait to curl up this summer with this new one.
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