The news is depressing these days. It’s either bad (ebola), stupid (voter ID laws) or tediously overdone (Hillary 2016?).
So I wrote a book of a different kind. We all need some uplift, some good old-fashioned American dream. I wrote a story where the good guys are nice, and they even come out ahead. Remember Horatio Alger? Rags to riches? America needs a Horatio Alger story.
Of course, it can’t all be good news. That would be boring. To have a happy ending you need a bad beginning. To overcome obstacles, you need obstacles to overcome.
My hero is the fourteen year old victim of child sexual abuse. The story begins the day she flees her home to make a better life. (Why that day? Read chapter one). We follow her through dead-end jobs and creative efforts to get ahead (Like what? Read on). We make friends with her new friends, who are also good folk, but they get arrested anyway (Why? BTW they’re black).
Making Manna is a charming story with delightful characters. “A wonderful story of family, redemption, and love,” said Heather Ann Thompson, author of Whose Detroit? “A beautiful story of flourishing in hard times,” said Billy Upski Wimsatt of Gamechanger Labs (and so much more). Because we spend so much time in the kitchen, Upski also plugs the “foodie delights.”
But Making Manna is also an indictment of our dead-end economy and our hypertrophic justice system. As I explain in my “coming out” blog post, it’s an effort to explore society’s unknown shadows by telling stories of people who live there. Years of data-driven legal and political advocacy have taken the form of a novel.
Yes, it’s fiction. I know too well that most dead-end jobs don’t lead to happy endings. I know too well the challenges that real people face – not fictional characters – when they come home from prison. But I want you to have a good time. Making Manna tours the broken alleyways of the American dream. But maybe also it helps us dream that – especially if we all work together – maybe we can make it turn out okay.
It’s new from Brandylane Books. I hope you enjoy it. I trust you’ll let me know ….