DR. RADWAY: The School Library Journal Review

I'm here on this blog this morning thanking Etta Anton for this kind review of Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent in School Library Journal. I love that she pairs this book with Dangerous Neighbors as well as Laurie Halse Anderson's Fever as books that open door to Philadelphia for younger readers.

That had been my ambition all along.

Thank you, Etta.

And thank you, Gary Kramer of Temple University Press, for letting me know.

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Dangerous Neighbors/Parallel Reads

Yesterday I received an email from Laura Geringer regarding Dangerous Neighbors, my historical novel set in 1876 Philadelphia and due to be released from Egmont USA next fall. She had read the book through one final time. She was writing with her thoughts about the cover. Neighbors is in many ways a cinematic book, and as a visual artist, Laura has always brought this keen extra sensibility to the way books look—not only that, she opens the conversation to the author. Reading Laura's descriptions of potential covers was like being given my own book back newly. I felt, I feel, anticipation.

At the close of our email conversation, Laura asked me whether I had any comparators in mind for Neighbors—any books that strike me as relevant parallels for readers. These were my thoughts:

When I describe the book — a story that unfolds around the
Centennial, a story in which large-scale tragedy strikes—people immediately make the Devil in the White City comparison, and I think there is some merit in that. In terms of an historical novel that is unafraid of language and idea, there is The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing. In terms of a story about Philadelphians affected by something larger than themselves, there is the middle grade reader, Fever. Finally, in terms of an historical novel written to feel entirely present and contemporary, not lost in a sepia spill, there is Amy Bloom's Away.

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