The extraordinary story of one woman’s ten-year medical and metaphysical odyssey that brought her physical, creative, emotional, and spiritual healing, by a MacArthur genius and two-time Pulitzer finalist. At the height of her career, with her first play opening on Broadway, and a happily married mother of three, Sarah Ruhl had just survived a high-risk twins pregnancy when she discovered the left side of her face completely paralyzed. She is assured that ninety percent of Bell’s palsy patients see spontaneous improvement and experience a full recovery. Like Ruhl’s own mother. Like Angelina Jolie. But Sarah is in the unlucky ten percent. And for a woman, wife, mother, and artist working in theater, the paralysis and the disconnect between the interior and exterior brings significant and specific challenges. So Ruhl begins an intense decade-long search for a cure while simultaneously grappling with the reality of her new face—one that, while recognizably her own—is incapable of accurately communicating feelings or intentions. Brimming with insight, humility, and levity, Smile is a triumph by one of America’s leading playwrights. It is an intimate examination of loss and reconciliation, and above all else, the importance of perseverance and hope in the face of adversity.
Archives
Glory Over Everything
The author of the New York Times bestseller and beloved book club favorite The Kitchen House continues the story of Jamie Pyke, son of both a slave and master of Tall Oakes, whose deadly secret compels him to take a treacherous journey through the Underground Railroad.
Everyone Brave is Forgiven
From the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Little Bee, a spellbinding novel about three unforgettable individuals thrown together by war, love, and their search for belonging in the ever-changing landscape of WWII London.
Geography of Genius
Acclaimed travel writer and the bestselling author of The Geography of Bliss examines the link between the power of place and the influence of culture on creativity. In The Geography of Genius, Weiner sets out to examine the connection between our surroundings and our most innovative ideas. He relates the history of places like Vienna of 1900, Renaissance Florence, ancient Athens, Song Dynasty Hangzhou, and Silicon Valley, to show how certain urban settings are conducive to ingenuity. In these places, Weiner asks, “What was in the air, and can we bottle it?”
The Marriage of Opposites
Growing up on idyllic St. Thomas in the early 1800s, Rachel dreams of life in faraway Paris. Rachel’s mother, a pillar of their small refugee community of Jews who escaped the Inquisition, has never forgiven her daughter for being a difficult girl who refuses to live by the rules. Growing up, Rachel’s salvation is their maid Adelle’s belief in her strengths, and her deep, life-long friendship with Jestine, Adelle’s daughter. But Rachel’s life is not her own. She is married off to a widower with three children to save her father’s business. When her husband dies suddenly and his handsome, much younger nephew, Frédérick, arrives from France to settle the estate, Rachel seizes her own life story, beginning a defiant, passionate love affair that sparks a scandal that affects all of her family, including her favorite son, who will become one of the greatest artists of France.
The Fifth Gospel
In Ian Caldwell’s masterful follow-up to his international sensation The Rule of Four, a lost gospel, a contentious relic, and a dying pope’s final wish converge to send two brothers—both Vatican priests—on an intellectual quest to untangle Christianity’s greatest historical mystery.
Eight Hundred Grapes
Complicated. That was the word her mother used when Georgia Ford returned home in search of the opposite. Home—the beloved Sonoma vineyard her father built from the ground up—had always been a place of simplicity: her parents, happily married for thirty years; her brothers, fiercely loyal, who would take a punch for their siblings; the early morning chores and the satisfaction of the setting sun over the western vines with a great glass of Pinot Noir. This was home, to Georgia.
Now, just a week before her scheduled wedding, Georgia returns to find the Ford family in turmoil. Secrets spill over as the last harvest nears, and Georgia realizes they may lose each other—and the vineyard they call home—forever. Eight Hundred Grapes is a story about the messy realities of family, the strength (and weaknesses) of romantic love, and the importance of finding a place to call home.
Luckiest Girl Alive
Ani FaNelli has a glamorous job at a glossy magazine; an enviable figure with the wardrobe to match; and soon, a luxurious wedding to her handsome blue blood fiancé. But behind her meticulously crafted veneer linger scars that nobody can see, and each day spent appearing flawless is more exhausting than the last. Now, finally offered an opportunity to set the record straight about a very violent, public trauma from her past, Ani must carefully weigh her chance at redemption—when telling the whole truth could destroy her picture-perfect world forever.
We Are Not Ourselves
Destined to be a classic, this “powerfully moving” (Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding), multigenerational debut novel of an Irish-American family is nothing short of a “masterwork” (Joshua Ferris, Then We Came To The End). We Are Not Ourselves tells the story of Eileen Leary, who, from the time she was nine years old and taking care of her alcoholic Irish immigrant parents in their tiny apartment in Woodside, Queens, has dreamed of rising above her station. Eileen marries a serious young research scientist named Edmund Leary, whom she believes will deliver her to the cosmopolitan life she deserves. Eileen encourages her husband to want more: a better job, better friends, a better house, but as years pass it becomes clear that his growing reluctance is part of a deeper psychological shift. An inescapable darkness enters their lives, and Eileen and Ed and their son Connell try desperately to hold together a semblance of the reality they have known, and to preserve, against long odds, an idea they have cherished of the future. Epic in scope, heroic in character, masterful in prose, We Are Not Ourselves heralds the arrival of a major new talent in contemporary fiction.
The Rosie Project
Don Tillman, a professor of genetics, has a brilliant scientific mind, but social situations confound him. He’s never had a second date. And so, in the evidence-based manner in which he approaches all things, he embarks upon the Wife Project: a sixteen-page questionnaire to find the perfect partner. Then in walks Rosie Jarman. Rosie is on a quest of her own. She’s looking for her biological father, a search that a certain genetics expert might just be able to help her with. Soon Don puts the Wife Project on the back burner in order to help Rosie pursue the Father Project. As their unlikely relationship blooms, Don realizes that love doesn’t always add up on paper.