Books on the Run

Here's a little blurb on a book I've been hearing about lately. I haven't read it yet, but if anyone has, I'd love to hear about it! Let me know what you think!

Dream of the Blue Room
Mac/Adam Cage
Paperback release, May 2005

About the author:
Michelle Richmond grew up in Alabama and currently lives in San Francisco, where she publishes the online literary journal Fiction Attic. Her story collection, The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress, won the 2000 Associated Writing Programs Award for Short Fiction, and her novel, Dream of the Blue Room, was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. She is the recipient of the 2006 Mississippi Review Fiction Prize. Her stories have appeared in Playboy, Glimmer Train, Other Voices, and many other magazines and anthologies. Her new novel, Ocean Beach, will be published next year by Bantam.

About the novel:
On a warm night in July, 32-year-old Jenny finds herself sitting on the deck of a Chinese cruise ship next to a charming but secretive stranger. In Jenny's lap is a tin containing the ashes of her best friend, Amanda Ruth, mysteriously murdered fourteen years earlier in a small Alabama town.
In this foreign landscape, filled with ancient cities that will soon be inundated by the rising waters of the Yangtze River, Jenny must confront her haunted past and decide the direction of her future. As the ship moves slowly upriver, from one abandoned village to another, Jenny journeys deeper into her own guilt and eroticism.
Dream of the Blue Room explores the nature of friendship and the intimacy that exists between young girls as they struggle toward adulthood. Set alternately against the impressive landscape of the Yangtze and in a small river town in Alabama, this stunning novel reflects on the human desire to control and tame what is ultimately untamable.
Praise for Dream of the Blue Room:
"A dreamy, haunting work with a deeply personal feel. Any time a work of fiction raises our sights to higher truths, as this one does, the writer has done her job." Florida Sun-Sentinel
"Some childhood relationships are so fulfilling they shape our lives and leave us wondering why they didn't last longer. Richmond captures, explores, and intertwines these bonds so elegantly, you might even think the relationships are your own." USA Today
"With the slow build-up of a mystery, the exquisite pain of a coming-of-age novel, the masterful images of a travel writer, and a darkness that is true to the Southern Gothic, Dream of a Blue Room is a work of wonderfully chimeric form. " Joanna Pearson, Small Spiral Notebook
"Intelligent, original, complex." The San Francisco Chronicle
"A complex and nimbly fashioned first novel." Kirkus Reviews
"The book is finely crafted and compelling, and its emotions resonate true and clear ." Booklist

Read an excerpt from Dream of the Blue Room in USA Today:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/excerpts/2003-04-02-blue-room_x.htm

Read the story behind the novel at backstory:
http://mjroseblog.typepad.com/backstory/2006/01/michelle_richmo.html

posted by Stephanie Rowe @ 3:25 PM