FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Coffeetown Announces the January Release of Gabriela and The Widow, a Story of Memory, Immortality and Redemption
Contact: Catherine Treadgold
Publisher Coffeetown Press
PO Box 70515
Seattle, WA 98127
206-414-7673
Catherine@coffeetownpress.Com
CoffeetownPress.com
Seattle, WA.—On January 15, 2013, Coffeetown Press will release Gabriela and The Widow ($14.95, 280 pp, 6×9 Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60381-147-7), a work of literary fiction by Jack Remick. Gabriela and The Widow tells the story of a dying aristocrat and the Mixteca caregiver who helps her assemble the jumbled pieces of her past, a process that gives them both love, closure, and the courage to move on.
Remick’s books have received impressive critical praise. A sampling:
Writes Jodi Lea Stewart, author of Summer of the Ancient, “Raw, exquisite writing talent splashed onto the page with such audacity and nerve that it gives you a heartache that burns a hole right through your spirit … that’s what I experienced reading Jack Remick’s Valley Boy.”
“If American literature produces one On the Road per century,” says poet and writer Priscilla Long, “then The Deification is it for the twenty-first. This road trip saga of would-be poet Eddie Iturbi from Sanger to San Francisco, from innocence to art, is fast, hot, thick, mythic, erudite, erotic, and intense.”
Of Remick’s novel Blood, the San Francisco Book Review writes, “The narrative is rhythmic, almost hypnotic, with a cadence like a relentless drum beat or at times a turbulent raging river. All of this combines to result in one of the best books I’ve ever read.”
The Widow (La Viuda) is ninety-two years old. She lives in a house filled with photos and coins, jewels and a sable coat. Aware that her memory is failing but burning with desire to record the story of her life on paper, she hires Gabriela, a nineteen-year-old Mixteca from Mexico. Gabriela is one of the few survivors of a massacre and treacherous journey to El Norte.
Gabriela and the Widow is a story of chaos, revenge, and change: death and love, love and sex, and sex and death. Gabriela seeks revenge for the destruction of her village. The Widow craves balance for the betrayals in her life. In the end, the Widow gives Gabriela the secret of immortality.
Remick says, “With Gabriela and The Widow I set out to write a novel about two women. One an immigrant, Gabriela, on a journey to the North, the other a dying old woman, a Widow who lives in the desert. I was drawn to the subject of the collision of cultures that is ripping America apart right now, but I also wished to examine how women relate without men. The men in Gabriela and The Widow are marginal—they are punishing, they are brutal, they are cheats and liars—but this is not a misanthropic book. It is the story of how The Widow makes Gabriela in her own image and sets her free from her bloody past. It is a book about mothers and daughters, it is a novel about women for women, but it is also a mythic recasting of the story of women before men.”
Jack Remick is a poet, short story writer, and novelist. In 2012 Coffeetown Press published the first two volumes of Jack’s California Quartet series, The Deification and Valley Boy. The final two volumes will be released in 2013: The Book of Changes and Trio of Lost Souls. Blood, A Novel was published by Camel Press, an imprint of Coffeetown Press, in 2011. You can find Jack online at Blood.camelpress.com.
Gabriela and The Widow is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.com. After January 15, 2013, it will also be available in multiple eBook and 6×9 trade paperback editions on BN.com, the European Amazons and Amazon Japan. Wholesale orders can be placed through info@coffeetownpress.com, Baker & Taylor or Ingram. Libraries can also purchase books through Follett Library Resources or Midwest Library Service.
ABOUT Coffeetown Press—Based in Seattle, Washington, Coffeetown Press has been publishing the finest fiction and nonfiction since 2005.
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