Description: Elyse is an empty-nest mother and artist in Alaska, and Astrid is a paleobotany professor in North Carolina. When the seemingly fulfilling lives of these distanced childhood friends are shaken, everything they've carefully established--from friends to careers to marriages--shifts, slips, unravels.
Brief description: Marybeth Holleman was raised by North Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains and lives in the embrace of Alaska's Chugach Mountains. She's the author of tender gravity: poems, The Heart of the Sound and coauthor of Among Wolves, and coeditor of Crosscurrents North, among others. She's also coeditor of the forthcoming A Poetic and Artistic Field Guide to Alaska. Her award-winning work appears in over fifty venues including Orion, Christian Science Monitor, Sierra, North American Review, Zoomorphic, and The Guardian. She has held artist residencies in such diverse places as Hedgebrook, Mesa Refuge, Ninfa, Denali National Park, and Tracy Arm Ford's Terror Wilderness. She transplanted to Alaska after falling head over heels for Prince William Sound just two years before the oil spill. When she's not kayaking those beloved fjords, she's following her wild huskies up and down Alaska's mountains.
Review Quotes:
"If you love the world, if you fear for its future, you must read Bloom Again. Its beautifully told story lifted me, inspired me, moved me to tears, and gave me ideas, energy, determination, and--yes, I'll say it--hope."
--Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Great Tide Rising
"Marybeth Holleman's novel ventures vividly and tenderly into beautiful and despairing ecosystems where life yet teeters on. Reminiscent, in warmth and charm, of novels by Ali Smith and Ann Patchett, Bloom Again asks the toughest possible questions. Are we asking the wrong questions about climate collapse? With extinction glaring us in the face, dare we hope for anything from life?"
--Mandy-Suzanne Wong, author of A Daughter of Mother-of-Pearl
"A feminist fictional account of current climate science, Bloom Again is an important book that marvelously captures the current science of climate change. Its appeal is both timely and lasting."
--Martha Amore, author of In the Quiet Season and Other Stories
"Overwhelmingly compelling, beautifully crafted with lyrical descriptions."
--Mei Mei Evans, author of Oil and Water