Paperback
Retail Price: $17.95
A moving look at how lives are shaped by circumstance.
A CIRCLE OF EARTH is one of the most enjoyable books I've read this year.
--Kaye Park Hinckley, author of A Hunger in the Heart and Birds of a Feather
Set in Alabama between and following the two world wars, A CIRCLE OF EARTH tells the story of two characters’ attempts to find happiness in a world where both lives and marriages are defined not by choice but by circumstance. At age seventeen Emma walks blindly into a marriage that is not a love match. Her plight becomes the attempt to exist within the confines of this relationship. The limitations of Henry’s world are uniquely cruel, as he has a searching and eager mind. The effects of the Great Depression worsen his situation, resulting in his placement in the state mental hospital, where he forms an unlikely bond with a young psychiatrist—a Northerner of whom he asks “if Levy had ever loved a woman. Loved her so that the lobe of an ear or the shape of her mouth were little sights to almost hurt a man’s heart.”
Paperback
Format: 6 x 9 Black & White Paperback, 393 pages
Publisher: Outskirts Press (Mar 20, 2014)
ISBN10: 1478726806
ISBN13: 9781478726807
Genre: FICTION / General
I know the world of this novel; I grew up in it-in Selma, Alabama, to be specific. The Clanton of A CIRCLE OF EARTH closely details the small city of Selma. I thought it wise not to use the true place name, as that might set up the reader to expect a different sort of novel. CIRCLE is not political per se; yet to my mind much social commentary is there, for the reader who is alert to it. As a young child I watched the world. It was a world of extremes: poverty and wealth, privilege and insult (there was strong class prejudice, as well as the prevalent race prejudice). All the niches between these extremes were filled with people--in this case mainly white-trying to live their lives according to some vision. It was rich material for writing. And at age twenty-one I conceived the main idea for this book. My motivation, then and now, is the conviction that life should be taken full notice of. Everything matters. In the present we are told to follow our dreams, even our bliss. My parents were never told that-much less their own parents (the generation that this book largely focuses on). Even the opportunity to think in this way is a privilege that very few people enjoy. I'm very aware of the injustice of that. 
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