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ISBN: 978-0-9819153-7-1
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ISBN: 978-0-9854930-0-4
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ISBN: 978-0-9842107-7-0
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ISBN: 978-0-9842107-6-3
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ISBN: 978-0-9842107-8-7
About the Book
It’s Thanksgiving week, 1989. We’re in Big Piney and Little Piney, two hollows near the town of Garnet in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A handful of mismatched folks — some country people, some far-flung, fancy people — discover they have one thing in common: someone they know is sick, real sick, dying sick. August Early has never set foot in a hospital before. Maggie Dulé packs a bag despite her vow never to return to the Pineys again. Burnice Kling, R.N., is fixing to “fire” her patient, a “cantankerous old cauliflower of a woman” and mother to an estranged daughter named Maggie. Meanwhile, Cadence Greevey passes among them unnoticed. She’s only 14, and has got a mama who’s ailing with no one at home to help. Their paths cross at a local hospice called Solace. Suddenly, they’re caregivers, bedside improvisers, doing all they can to beat back death or “hurry him on about his business.”
About the Author
Amanda McTigue hails from a long line of talkers. Her daddy’s people were immigrant Irish Catholics who wound up stateside in the Appalachian coal-mining country of West Virginia. Her mother’s people were Presbyterian preachers from the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. Amanda’s recent short stories have appeared in Typehouse, Literally Stories and 99 Pine Street; her story “Gone Means Gone” was shortlisted for the 2015 American Literary Review Award. As a writer for the theatre, Amanda’s works have been produced at Carnegie Hall, the Minnesota Opera and the Green Music Center. As a teacher/director, Amanda stages operas and musicals at Sonoma State University. She’s a favorite with book clubs (live or through Skype), and as a lecturer and workshop leader sharing her insights into the writer’s craft. She’s hard at work on her second novel (working title, Monkey Bottom). You can keep up with her doings including up-coming appearances at amandamctigue.com
Praise for Going to Solace
Named a “Best Read of 2012” by public radio KRCB’s literary program Word by Word.
“When the people in our lives bring out the best in us, community functions at its optimum. Through their connection with a hospice, the characters in Going to Solace, each in their own way, discover a resilience in themselves of which they were unaware, spurring them to take on challenges they previously thought impossible. Amanda McTigue masterfully sets us down in a small-town in the South, where we see in each of her characters reflections of our own capacity for caring, forgiveness, and integrity.”
─ David Robert Ord, Editorial Director, Namaste Publishing; author,Your Forgotten Self
“What The Help did for the Deep South, Going to Solace does for Appalchia. Set in the hills and dales of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, McTigue’s not-soon-to-be-forgotten characters belie Southern stereotypes as they struggle with life’s great ending moment. Through poetic and descriptive storytelling, a six-day journey unfolds resonant with universal themes of family, friendship and intersecting cultures. Readers will relish the sparse, but precise use of the dialect of the mountain people—it’s delightful and literate.”
─ Waights Taylor, Jr., author, Our Southern Home
“Amanda McTigue’s Going to Solace is a romp in Appalachia like none other. Quirky characters, intimate stories, local humor and sadness (all written in note-perfect “home-talk”) capture the lilting cadences of the best of Southern writing, both its poetic and its Gothic elements. Just as you wipe away your tears of compassion, like a stand-up comedienne, McTigue has you weeping with laughter.”
─ Carol Benet, Ph.D., professor emeritus, UC Berkeley
“There’s sleight-of-hand here, don’t miss it. Beneath the surface, the author welcomes us (all of us) by playing with assumptions about race, ability and cultural heritage. Others’ stories become ours, multiple stories become one, exploring what happens when we’re brought together under the terrible, leveling shadow of death.”
─ Lynne D. Morrow, Ph.D., Professor, Music and American Culture, Sonoma State University
“McTigue is a master of discernment who transports us to a world in which great richness of character underlies small town ways and abiding truths arise from the eternal contest of fear versus hope. Going to Solace is an exhilarating work, full of notes exquisitely rendered with empathy and humor. It makes blood rush to the head and heart, just like the fresh mountain air its characters breathe.”
─ Robert Kertzner, M.D., Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco
“You are not alone. That’s the message every hospice worker brings to those facing terminal illness—and it’s the take-away from this wonderful book. I was so grateful to laugh and cry with these characters. At last, storytelling that isn’t grim! On the contrary, it’s life-affirming. Those who do hospice work know that life in the shadow of death can be beautiful and graceful and surprising. The subtle, personal details in this book—the way that lives can intersect in ways that are profound—all make for healing reading.”
─ Karen Kenney, Hospice of the Valley, Phoenix, AZ
“Going to Solace is one of the most beautifully written novels I’ve read in quite a while. Kudos to Amanda McTigue for capturing so well the lyricism of the local dialect of these characters. I consider this book to be not just fiction, but a true work of literature.”
─ Frances Caballo, Owner, ACT Communications; Social Media Editor, Redwood Writers Club