Fiction. Like the existential quest of Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas or Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, Anita Palatino's journey is one you won't forget. In this gripping new novel, Catherine Gammon will take you into the psychological danger zone of desperate longing and unfulfilled desire before returning you safely home. Set in New York City, the novel plumbs the tumultuous inner lives of people searching for something as simple to name and as difficult to achieve as understanding: there is Anita, a young woman tormented by the abuse and mistreatment of her family; Cruz Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant wrestling with his personal demons; his nephew Tomás, in the States to earn money for the family he left behind; Sister Monica Luz, a young nun and mother figure to Anita; Sydney Booker, the world-weary detective who knows more than he wants to about people and life; and Magda Ramirez, a big-hearted widow from Colombia struggling to carry on. These and the many other characters contending with the sorrowful core of the human condition—what Eugene O'Neill called "the whole misbegotten mad lot of us"—will leave you pondering our search for connection and meaning long after you've turned the final page. Unflinching and complex, SORROW examines the hidden selves enfolded within each of us and shows the painstaking path to clarity and faith ... and love. A story of betrayal and redemption, Catherine Gammon's SORROW will lay hold of you, and it won't let go. "SORROW is a devastating, gorgeous, impossible, unstoppable book—powered by unbearable desire, murder, a stunning turbulence of language and story. The real triumphs of this novel are Anita, Magda, Danny, Tomas, Cruz, people you will never forget even though tragedy, abuse, and circumstance did their best to render them invisible. A tour de force."—Eve Ensler "What SORROW illustrates with such dark and devastating beauty is that the heart that is forced out of innocence into terrible knowledge will one day utter its grief, and when it does, the sound, like its source, will be unimaginable. One of the many astonishing things about Catherine Gammon's novel is the exacting emotional and psychological candor with which it is written. Never does the book blanch for the sake of false comfort; never does it allow the reader to dodge harrowing truths, those truths humanity most urgently needs to confront. It is a work of profound courage and integrity."—Kellie Wells "Think of a female Dostoevsky. Think of a female Raskolnikov. Gammon's modern turn on the classic tale takes us into the mind, heart and soul of a woman who has been the victim of sexual abuse in childhood; but, in so doing, she illuminates the dynamics of power and redemption to which we are universally subject. SORROW is a stunning page-turner and unforgettable."—Toi Derricotte

Sorrow

Literature & Fiction

Gammon, Catherine

Contemporary

Braddock Avenue Books

Russell, a Vietnam veteran, finds his life changed after he takes in Isabel, a mysterious teenage runaway, who uses constantly changing stories as a means of self-protection

Isabel Out Of The Rain

United States

Mercury House

Russell, a Vietnam veteran, finds his life changed after he takes in Isabel, a mysterious teenage runaway, who uses constantly changing stories as a means of self-protection

Isabel Out of the Rain

Fiction from the 1970s, early stories of loss and obsession, voices from another century, another planet, voices exploring themselves, both innocent and haunted, a time capsule, message in a bottle from a forgotten present, memory of the future. Or simply a collection of stories, an old collection, early successes and failures, the young writer this older writer used to be.

Beauty and the Beast: Stories from the 1970s

lulu.com

Who is China Blue, and is he a monster? In the early 1980s, teenaged Tess runs away from home to New York City after a fortune-teller dredges up a memory she'd dismissed as a forgotten dream. Tess's Mama struggles to understand the reason for her disappearance as other characters battle with the consequences of US wars in Central America, the mistakes of the surveillance state, as well as with alcoholism and what "truth" means to them. Winner of the Bridge Eight Press Fiction Prize, Catherine Gammon's musical novel is rich with fully-formed characters, generous with real feeling, and intentional with its prose.

China Blue

Parenting & Relationships

Bridge Eight Press

Timely and introspective, Catherine Gammon's The Gunman and the Carnival is the meeting of contemporary voices and visions that offer not relatability, but an intimate encounter open to strangeness and its embrace.&nbsp;The stories in the inimitable Catherine Gammon's The Gunman and the Carnival&#8201;--&#8201;loosely linked and set in Los Angeles, California&#8201;--&#8201;center on women of various ages and backgrounds. Constructed around themes of solitude and connection, creation and destruction, love and loss, these sixteen stories unfold in a world haunted by individual and collective violence, systemic injustice, pandemic, and environmental duress: not with genre sensibilities of the dystopic or apocalyptic, but with compassion and wisdom that renders a staid, meditative examination of our contemporary challenges. The Gunman and the Carnival does not aspire to be a panorama or to portray the city (or the nation) in its extraordinary complexity. Rather it shines a roving light into the minds and hearts of an idiosyncratic handful of characters living in our difficult times and invites each one to sing. Some of the stories are realist, some oblique and fragmented, others metafictional or surreal, and the urban&#8201;/&#8201;suburban landscapes are accented by the occasional appearance of wildlife and the presence (and voices) of trees. Handled with grace and intelligence, these stories chronicle contemporary struggles: the violence and the joy examined in equal measure.&nbsp;

The Gunman and The Carnival: Stories

Baobab Press

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