During my tenure at Auntie’s Bookstore, I got mothered from every direction. It was marvelous, and for the first time I didn’t resist any of it. I began to get, at thirty, how complex and multifaceted maternal love is. How great it is to be patted and hugged and celebrated.
A couple of years ago, I went to happy hour with three of my favorite women. Working mothers, all three in their fifties, educated, curious, compassionate, tough minded. We discussed the seismic tremors my confidence had gone through, and they told me, with huge pumpkin grins, that life would get better every decade, and by the time I reached my fifties, the world would be entirely different for me, and I’d discover a strength and pleasure unimaginable to any of them when they were in their thirties.
I can’t tell you how often I’ve returned to that conversation. How big they drew the world. Happy hour became dinner became after hours became midnight. We laughed forever, lifetimes, and beneath all the laughter were lessons I’ll go on learning.
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Jill Malone
Jill Malone grew up in a military family, went to German kindergarten, and lived across from a bakery that made gummi bears the size of mice. She has lived on the East Coast and in Hawaii, and for the last seventeen years in Spokane with her son, two dogs, a hedgehog, and a lot of outdoor gear. She looks for any excuse to play guitar. Jill is married to a performance artist and addiction counselor who makes the best risotto on the planet.
Giraffe People is her third novel. Her first novel, Red Audrey and the Roping, was a Lambda finalist and won the third annual Bywater Prize for Fiction. A Field Guide to Deception, her second novel, was a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley, and won the Lambda Literary Award and the Great Northwest Book Festival.
Giraffe People
Between God and the army, fifteen-year-old Cole Peters has more than enough to rebel against. But this Chaplain’s daughter isn’t resorting to drugs or craziness. Truth to tell, she’s content with her soccer team and her band and her white bread boyfriend.
And then, of course, there’s Meghan.
Meghan is eighteen years old and preparing for entry into West Point. For this she has sponsors: Cole’s parents. They’re delighted their daughter is finally looking up to someone. Someone who can tutor her and be a friend.
But one night that relationship changes and Cole’s world flips.
Giraffe People is a potent reminder of the rites of passage and passion that we all endure on our road to growing up and growing strong. Award-winning author Jill Malone tells a story of coming out and coming of age, giving us a take that is both subtle and fresh.
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A Field Guide to Deception
In Jill Malone’s second novel, A Field Guide to Deception, nothing is as simple as it appears: community, notions of motherhood, the nature of goodness, nor even compelling love. Revelations are punctured and then revisited with deeper insight, alliances shift, and heroes turn anti-hero—and vice versa.
With her aunt’s death Claire Bernard loses her best companion, her livelihood, and her son’s co-parent. Malone’s smart, intriguing writing beguiles the reader into this taut, compelling story of a makeshift family and the reawakening of a past they’d hoped to outrun. Claire’s journey is the unifying tension in this book of layered and shifting alliances.
A Field Guide to Deception is a serious novel filled with snappy dialogue, quick-moving and funny incidents, compelling characterizations, mysterious plot twists, and an unexpected climax. It is a rich, complex tale for literary readers.
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Red Audrey and the Roping
Occasionally a debut novel comes along that rocks its readers back on their heels. Red Audrey and the Roping is one of that rare and remarkable breed. With storytelling as accomplished as successful literary novelists like Margaret Atwood and Sarah Waters, Jill Malone takes us on a journey through the heart of Latin professor Jane Elliot.
Set against the dramatic landscapes and seascapes of Hawaii, this is the deeply moving story of a young woman traumatized by her mother’s death. Scarred by guilt, she struggles to find the nerve to let love into her life again. Afraid to love herself or anyone else, Jane falls in love with risk, pitting herself against the world with dogged, destructive courage. But finally she reaches a point where there is only one danger left worth facing. The sole remaining question for Jane is whether she is willing to accept her history, embrace her damage, and take a chance on love.
As well as a gripping and emotional story, Red Audrey and the Roping is a remarkable literary achievement. The breathtaking prose evokes setting, characters, and relationships with equal grace. The dialogue sparks and sparkles. Splintered fragments of narrative come together to form a seamless suspenseful story that flows effortlessly to its dramatic conclusion.
Winner of the Bywater Prize for Fiction, Red Audrey and the Roping is one of the most memorable first novels you will ever read.
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Jill –
I have a friend who is closing in on 60, almost 20 years my senior, and she is always telling me how life continues to get better as she ages, that her forties were way better than her thirties, her fifties infinitely better than her forties, and so on. I’m a little skeptical most of the time, to say the least. But I am now 41 and I do feel that I’m still growing, still learning, but I have a much more solid understanding of myself and the world around me. Your friends reminded me of my friend, and I suspect they may all be right. 😉
~Georgia
Georgia, I suspect the same thing, and it helps that they make it look like an adventure.