The Cure

Author Appearances: Author is well connected within the literary conference/ academic writer's circuit and will likely be asked back to serve as faculty at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Summer Conference and the Writing the Medical Experience Conference at Sarah Lawrence; she also expects to appear at the Literary Guild of Orange County in Southern California next spring, as well as the North Carolina Writers' Conference in November, both of which she has participated in before. We will set up bookstore readings on the east and west coast to coincide with her participation at conferences and other appearances. Academic Marketing: Medical Schools and universities with writing/medical writing programs Direct Mail to Polio organizations: Author is keyed into polio organizations (her father, a polio survivor, was President of the Michigan Polio Network and the Detroit area coordinator for the Polio Connection of America) and we will do a post card mailing to their lists. Advertising in Bellevue Literary Review. Web Marketing Publicity: -Target National Broadcast Media: NPR (Fresh Air, Diane Rehm, Leonard Lopate), Booknotes.

A novel of mid-twentieth-century America, about a family bound together and almost torn apart by a young son's polio."An old-fashioned novel, in the best sense of that phrase, elegantly wrought, hardheaded, and tenderhearted."-Michael Chabon on A Company of Three "A first novel that soars."-The New York Times on Like China As America emerges from the Depression, the Hatherfords build a comfortable life just outside of New York City, in rural Bergen County, New Jersey. They are a glamorous couple: Vern is the charismatic owner of a successful Ford dealership, and his flamboyant wife Maeve is beautiful even in middle age. When their three-year-old son Scott falls prey to polio, and later, another son must go to war, their marriage slowly implodes. In the midst of it all, twelve-year-old Patsy steals swallows of whiskey and tries to make sense of the world around her, which includes an unusual intimacy between her brother Scott, and Julian, a young African American boy who lives among them. Neither historical nor medical fiction, The Cure offers the pleasures of both in its richly complex portrayal of the lives and times of its characters. A beautifully written family saga about race, war, childhood illness, and romantic desire, The Cure has at its heart wounding and the struggle for hope. Varley O'Connor is the author of A Company of Three (Algonquin, 2003) and Like China (Morrow, 1991). She has taught writing at Hofstra University; Brooklyn College; University of California, Irvine; and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. She has been an actress for television, theater, and film and lives in Brooklyn, New York.