Crackpots: A Novel

Sara Pritchard

Aga 2003 · HarperCollins

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When we first meet Ruby Reese she’s a spunky kid in a cowgirl hat, tap dancing her way through a slightly off-kilter 1950s childhood. With an insomniac mother and a demolitions-expert father, her entire family is what the residents of her small town would call "a bunch of crackpots." Despite the dramas of her upbringing, Ruby matures into a creative, introspective, and wholly beguiling woman. But her adulthood is marked by complex relationships and romantic missteps -- three unsuitable marriages, dramatic crushes, the complicated love between siblings. As Sara Pritchard deftly guides us through Ruby's story, from the present to the past and back again, a portrait of a remarkably resilient woman emerges. Suffused with humor and melancholy, imagination and insight, Crackpots heralds the debut of a skilled and sensitive storyteller.

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Ursula Hegi (born May 23, 1946) spent the first 18 years of her life in post-World War II Germany. When she tried to ask questions about the war, she received only vague answers and heard little about the Holocaust. Hegi immigrated to the United States in 1964. Now an award-winning novelist, Hegi is best known for her book Stones from the River. Picked by Oprah Winfrey as a selection for Oprah's highly successful book club, the prequel to Hegi's highly-praised Floating In My Mother's Palm traces the path of average Germans during the turbulent wartime years from 1915 to 1952. Narrated by a dwarf who eventually learned that being different is a secret that all humans share, Stones from the River was nominated for a PEN Faulkner Award and received the Governor's Writer's Award. Also the author of the books Intrusions, Unearned Pleasures and Other Stories, and Salt Dancers, Hegi is the recipient of more than two dozen grants and awards, including an NEA Fellowship and five awards from PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. She has also written over 100 reviews for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post.