It's 1960 in the Panhandle town of Charnelle, Texas -- a year and a half since sixteen-year-old Laura Tate's mother boarded a bus and mysteriously disappeared. Assuming responsibility for the Tate household, Laura cares for her father and three brothers and outwardly maintains a sense of calm. But her balance is upset and the repercussions of her family's struggles are revealed when a chance encounter with a married man leads Laura into a complicated relationship for which she is unprepared.
As Kennedy battles Nixon for the White House, Laura must navigate complex emotional terrain and choose whether she, too, will flee Charnelle. Dramatizing the tension between desire and familial responsibility, The Girl from Charnelle delivers a heartfelt portrait of a young woman's reckoning with the paradoxes of love. Eloquent, tender, and heart-wrenching, K. L. Cook's unforgettable debut novel marks the arrival of a significant new voice in American fiction.

The Girl from Charnelle: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Cook, K. L.

United States

William Morrow

It's 1960 in the Panhandle town of Charnelle, Texas—a year and a half since sixteen-year-old Laura Tate's mother boarded a bus and mysteriously disappeared. Assuming responsibility for the Tate household, Laura cares for her father and three brothers and outwardly maintains a sense of calm. But her balance is upset and the repercussions of her family's struggles are revealed when a chance encounter with a married man leads Laura into a complicated relationship for which she is unprepared. As Kennedy battles Nixon for the White House, Laura must navigate complex emotional terrain and choose whether she, too, will flee Charnelle.
A heartfelt portrait of a young woman's reckoning with the paradoxes of love—eloquent, tender, and heart-wrenching—K. L. Cook's unforgettable debut novel marks the arrival of a significant new voice in American fiction.

William Morrow Paperbacks

In this tenth anniversary edition of K. L. Cook’s debut collection, the linked stories of Last Call span three generations in the life of one West Texas family. Events both tender and tragic lead to a strange and lovely vision of a world stitched together in tenuous ways as the characters struggle to make sense of their lives amid the shifting boundaries of marriage, family, class, and culture. 
A series of unusual incidents—a daughter’s elopement, a sobering holiday trip, a vicious attack by the family dog, a lightning strike—provokes a mother of five to abandon her children. An oil rigger, inspired by sun-induced hallucinations, rescues his estranged wife, who doesn’t appreciate his chivalry. In the wake of his father’s and brother’s deaths, a teenage boy finds precarious solace working with his mother at a country-western bar. A woman fleeing her fourth marriage arrives at a complicated understanding of love and responsibility. 
Cook’s stories—suggesting unlikely connections between comedy and pathos, cruelty and generosity—promise a hard-won dignity and hope.

Last Call: Stories (The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction)

Bison Books

Fiction. K. L. Cook's award-winning LOVE SONGS FOR THE QUARANTINED illuminates the unexpected, the unforeseen—the moments when, without warning, everything changes. A surprise visit from the infamous Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow disturbs a thirteen-year boy's routine—and future. A fortune teller's ominous predictions unsettle two brothers during their first visit to the Cotton Bowl. Whooping cough quarantines a family and reminds them of their precarious history. A miniscule filament of hot steel lodges in a man's eye and irrevocably alters the course of his marriage. Sixteen love songs about the transformations that await us—whether we're ready or not."As the title suggests, these are songs for people entrapped by love. Sometimes it's a happy entrapment, but more often it's unhappy, and most of the time just inscrutable in the way that love can be. These stories are plain spoken and fine, not the least of which is the lead story, where a dying man with a deformity is revisited by his cousin, Clyde Barrow...yes, of Bonnie and Clyde fame...and the protagonist takes a Kodak picture of woundings upon woundings. The stories are also savvy and compelling. K. L. Cook knows the landscape of love in modern times perfectly."—John Keeble"Reading K. L. Cook's LOVE SONGS FOR THE QUARANTINED, I had the giddy feeling I was privy to a secret, that somehow I was being let in on a great, hidden story that few were lucky to read, and as I continued to the next story and the next, I had the same remarkable feeling. This is a lucid and luminous collection—an extraordinary book. K. L. Cook works a rare magic."—Debra Magpie Earling

Love Songs for the Quarantined

Willow Springs Editions

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cook, K. L.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Cook, K. L.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cook, K. L.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Girl from Charnelle: A Novel

The Girl from Charnelle: A Novel

Last Call: Stories (The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction)

Love Songs for the Quarantined