Our 13th Divorce - Hardcover

Cashion, Matthew Deshe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 160489184X ISBN 13: 9781604891843

Publisher: Livingston Pr, 2018

Winner of the Edna Ferber Book Prize, Our Thirteenth Divorce is a funny and moving portrait of multi-generational love, loss, failure, and triumph. What could go wrong when Judith Owen allows her first husband--a jobless jokester of a salesman she divorced thirty years earlier--to move into her coastal Georgia backyard "condo?" Married six times each, they argue over what advice to give their only child, Harold, 32, who is bringing his fiance, a New York City raised-therapist, home to meet the family. Will they survive the Christmas party hosted by Harold's next-door grandparents, married miserably for fifty years? Will the guests--seven ex-in-laws, eight wild children, and four feisty dogs--refrain from injuring anyone? Will Harold take a stand and defend his bride-to-be? Will anyone learn anything?

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About the Author:

Matt Cashion was born in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, and grew up in Brunswick, Ga. He earned a master of fine arts degree from the University of Oregon. His story collection, Last Words of the Holy Ghost, won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction in 2015. His first novel, How the Sun Shines on Noise, published by Livingston Press, was a finalist, among 400 manuscripts, in the 2003 William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition co-sponsored by The Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society and The Mary Freeman Wisdom Foundation based in New Orleans, La. He has worked (in this order): on a tobacco farm, as a short-order cook, in fast-food, at a video store, in an airport tollbooth, as a door-to-door environmental fundraiser, at a chemical plant (now an EPA superfund site), in construction, as an AM disc jockey, as a waiter, as a third-shift convenience store clerk, as a blood donor (part-time), and as a bartender. He has also been an AP award-winning journalist, has taught literature and writing at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and at Mitchell Community College, in Statesville, North Carolina. He is currently Professor of English at The University of Wisconsin, La Crosse.

Review:

It's terribly hard to write funny and Cashion accomplishes just that with rare aplomb. Sweet and sad and full of pluck, the lives unfold before our very eyes. One does not read so much as they listen. One does not read so much as they while away the time in a wonderful place with generous people.--Robert Olmstead, judge of the 2017 Edna Ferber Book Prize, author of Savage Country, and Elements of the Writing Craft.

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