Tuesday, March 17, 2020
The Great Pandemic Book Launch and Frolic; otherwise known as the Marvelous, the Mystical, the Fantastical Saint Patrick's Day Book Party for Marly Youmans's Charis in the World of Wonders
Ethereal Reception to Follow
Place: In your airy, wondrous imagination
Book release date: 17 March 2020 St. Patrick's Day
Official pub date: 26 March 2020
Time: 12:01 a.m. - 11:59 p.m.
Book Party Saint: Patrick, naturellement!
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Praise for
Charis in the World of Wonders
Praise for
Charis in the World of Wonders
“Charis in the World of Wonders confirms once more Marly Youmans' place among the magi. There is indeed ‘a dark and amazing intricacy in the ways of Providence’, as this spellbinding novel attests.”
—John Wilson, Contributing Editor, Englewood Review of Books
“Charis is a prismatic grace journey that awakens our dulled senses and ignites our adventurous hearts. A seventeenth-century girl pilgrim, with dark shadows of Salem foreboding over her, begins a refractive journey as a faithful exile toward a golden sea.”
—Makoto Fujimura, Artist; Author of Culture Care and Silence and Beauty
“Imagine if William Faulkner had decided to rewrite Last of the Mohicans. What you would have is something like Charis in the World of Wonders—a wild adventure tale written with grace and insight. Youmans' prose is fluid, sharply witty, and deeply rich in symbolism—the work of a master.”
—J. Augustine Wetta, OSB, Author of The Eighth Arrow and Humility Rules
“Youmans’ magnificent storyteller brings the early days of Europeans on the American continent vividly to life, in all their wonder and sorrow.”
—Emily Barton, Author of Brookland and The Book of Esther
“From the pen of an award-winning novelist and poet comes the story of Charis, a girl who loses everything and finds love and acceptance in an age of fear and uncertainty. This book is that rare thing, a novel containing characters who are both historically accurate and completely relatable.”
—Fiorella De Maria, Author of A Most Dangerous Innocence and The Sleeping Witness
A writer I greatly admire and have sometimes written about, Marly Youmans, has a new book coming late in March from Ignatius Press: Charis in the World of Wonders, with cover art and illustrations by the incomparable Clive Hicks-Jenkins. This novel, set in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, should occasion a piece that tackles the whole sweep of Youmans’s work. She’s not part of any fashionable faction, and much as I would be delighted and surprised to see it receive generous attention in the New York Times Book Review and other such outlets, I am mainly hoping that First Things, Commonweal, Image, and other kindred publications will not let this opportunity pass.
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Praise:
from writers and artists on social media
Praise:
from writers and artists on social media
James Artimus Owen, writer and artist: This book, written by my dear friend Marly and illuminated by one of my great inspirations, my friend Clive, is a great example of What Truly Matters in the world. What keeps me going in a world of seemingly ever increasing darkness? Shining lights. Just like this.
Makoto Fujimura, nihongan painter, cultural catalyst, writer: Ok. Cannot help to tweet. “Charis”, Marly’s next novel coming out, is one of the most beautifully wrought writings of the “burning bushes” all about us that I’ve encountered in recent times. Absolutely mesmerizing novel. #kintsuginovel #culturecare
Makoto Fujimura, nihongan painter, cultural catalyst, writer: Ok. Cannot help to tweet. “Charis”, Marly’s next novel coming out, is one of the most beautifully wrought writings of the “burning bushes” all about us that I’ve encountered in recent times. Absolutely mesmerizing novel. #kintsuginovel #culturecare
John Wilson, editor: Every writer is in a sense sui generis, but some to a greater degree than others--@marlyyoumans, for instance.
Makoto Fujimura: What a stunning, beautiful story Charis is. I can’t stop thinking of it. Hortus continues to roam in my mind, bringing all of us to freedom.
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Charis
“When I swung over that windowsill, everything changed for me. We are meant to go in and out of doors in civilized style, but my mother bade me climb into woodsy wildness and a darkness flushed with crimson light and torches…”
Clambering into the branches of a tree, a young woman flees flaming arrows and massacre. She will need to struggle for survival: to scour the wilderness for shelter, to strive and seek for a new family and a setting where she can belong. Her unmarked way is costly, heroic, hard.
For Charis, the world outside the window of home is a maze of hazards. And even if she survives the wilds, it is no small, simple matter to discover and nest among her own kind—the godly, those called Puritans by others. She may be tugged by her desires for companionship, may even stumble into a sharp, intense love for a man, and may be made to try the strength of female heroism in ways no longer familiar to women in our century.
Streams of darkness run through the seventeenth-century villages of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Occult fears have a way of creeping into the mind. And what young woman can be safe from the dangers of wilderness when its shadowy thickets spring up so easily in the soil of human hearts?
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A note from the illuminator:
Marly Youmans' historic novel 'Charis in the World of Wonders' chronicles the journey of its protagonist on her horseback flight from destruction to sanctuary and from sanctuary to an unexpected madness that had me gnawing my knuckles as I read.
Marly is a peerless writer and at Ignatius she has an editor and team doing everything to ensure that the book's jacket and the illustrations within do justice to her illuminating narrative. Not for the first time with Marly I'm steeped in a world of early American folk art, of embroidered samplers and nature not yet crowded out by man. At its heart, Charis on her courageous Hortus, who must carry her to safety and a new life. The image here is just a tiny corner of the cover artwork. It has been, as it always is in the company of Marly, a revelatory journey.
--Clive Hicks Jenkins, pilfered from facebook
Happy Launch Day! My copy is wending its way to me from Ignatius. I cannot wait to read it!
ReplyDeleteGrand! Strange sort of launches we'll be having...
DeleteThank you so much, Scott. I am honored to have you as a reader--so thoughtful and imaginative.
Envy, green and suppurating, prevents me from commenting on this post.
ReplyDeleteHah, I shall take that as a loving remark from RR!
DeleteAnd as I am the absolute Queen of bad timing, probably you can restrain the green! I had an FSG book come out just after 9-11. I had another FSG book leave hardcover, doing well, and go into the newly revived Bard imprint owned by HarperCollins just as HC collapsed and had to be restructured--without the Bard imprint and hence my book. Those two events hit my second and third books, and the after-shocks were permanent. I don't even know how many books came out just before and just after an editor's departure, leaving the book an orphan. I had one book that was a plain old hot potato; I lost count how many editors had responsibility. And now a pandemic book.
So, no need for envy...
If I were a towering narcissist, I might credit myself with negative powers!
Envy can come from the heart. It's just that the heart may be displaced.
DeleteWhat's wrong with being a towering narcissist? If no one's handing out love who better to depend on than yourself? You would, for instance, be well aware of the sweet spots.
I can see a long short story, even a novel, starting with the sequence of mishaps you list. If you weren't so resilient I'd offer my sympathy. The tension is established when it's revealed you have another book coming out for which the penalties of failure are unimaginable. Except you imagine them. No myths and/or dragons this time. Set it in Boise, Idaho, and switch on Google Earth. I've just done so and, believe me, the town is disappointing. So let disappointment be the theme.
Hahaha! My husband was once employed by a towering narcissist, and it cost us a great many things...
DeleteI don't think it's so awfully bad for a writer not to be recognized. (I say that even though I can think of several people who never quite recovered from lack of recognition.) It may make him or her sad at times, but it might also mean the cultivation of inner determination, the discovery of strength, the putting of one's care and love into the thing being made. Odd, really, but making and giving can occur no matter the numbers who receive. And clearly only a tiny percentage of writers receive great numbers, and that is out of a writer's control--determined by luck and the publisher's choosing of who to push and who to let sit on a list because it adds luster.
Boise! That's amusing. The Boiseans are now up in arms! RR must be fed to the local dragon! (Yes, there is always, always a dragon. It just might not look like one.)