One Way Home is a poignant, compassionate, and humorous tale of a feisty single mother struggling to raise her two sons - and escape the unwanted attentions of her ex. In this fast, funny and wonderfully original novel, Susan Pepper Robbins, an award-winning writer, gives us a story with a heroine. Once again, Ruth has found a new job and a new apartment in a new town. Once again, she has enrolled her two boys - Richie, age twelve, and Andrew, age eight - in a new school, after explaining for the umpteenth time why they had to move. And once again, her ex-husband has somehow discovered their new address, and has begun paying the boys surreptitious daytime visits and cooking them lunch while she's at work. Ruth thinks that she is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Will Richie ever stop harassing her - in his best rapper's voice - for being an "early-stage alcoholic"? Will Andrew ever stop whining about getting a dog? And most important, will her ex-husband ever leave her alone for long enough so that she can have a normal life and do normal things, like go out on a date? Welcome to the joys of parenting, nineties style. In One Way Home, Susan Pepper Robbins takes us on a quirky engaging, and frequently uproarious roller-coaster ride through one single mother's life - the pitfalls, the pratfalls, and the uphill struggle for some degree of sanity. Here is a novel that will touch the heart and tickle the funny bone of anyone who has ever experienced the ups and downs of family life.

One Way Home

Robbins, Susan Pepper

Random House]

Wake up in a storm. Row down a flooded alley of people looking for their way home. "Nothing but the Weather" wades through the water, both clean and dirty, digging up life without cleaning it off first. The collection introduces you to a grandmother who reads magazines at the grief counselor's office because her son wants her to adjust to life again. You will rub shoulders with a bipolar Lynn who has half-started just about every career. Mingle with an array of family units that hold secrets, lies, but love one another.

Nothing but the Weather

Literature & Fiction

Short Stories & Anthologies

Unsolicited Press

Some love falters, some fails, and some love finds a way to survive. A strange love triangle turns and twists and tangles as three people try to find their way with and through one another. Laura and Jeremy marry, and take their first hopeful — and desperate — steps together; but always there is Henry, bound to them both by love and guilt and a terrible accident years before. The story whirls like the wedding dance, until at last the music stops, and they find the truth beyond the old songs and ‘the chants of night’. With lyrical prose and a hypnotic rhythm, Susan Pepper Robbins creates a story both disturbing and beautiful.

There Is Nothing Strange

Literary

Holland House

Crystal Ball, a 12 year old foster child, is saving her 16 year old epileptic sister from the predatory Keith Peller, and writing a novel whose working title is “Dead and Gone.” She is sure that Keith Peller caused her Uncle David’s drowning the summer before and is intent on raping her sister. She plans how she will rescue her sister, also a “foster,” and get them to Texas where her aunt lives.

Local Speed

The Tin Can House and Other Stories

I'm Jayme is a story by the acclaimed author Susan Pepper Robbins. I'm Jayme is a touching and heartfelt story that touches on themes from family to dealing with trauma. Susan Pepper Robbins lives in rural Virginia where she grew up. Her first novel was published when she was fifty ("One Way Home," Random House, 1993). Her fiction has won prizes (the Deep South Prize, the Virginia Prize) and has been published in journals. Her collection of stories is "Nothing But the Weather" and was published by the indie press Unsolicited Press, as was the novel "Local Speed." "There Is Nothing Strange," a novel was published in England in 2016, (Holland House Books). Her stories focus on the drama of ordinary lives. She retired from teaching writing at Hampden-Sydney College and wrote a dissertation on Jane Austen at the University of Virginia.

I'm Jayme

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