Friday, 10:00 a.m.
Ingrid Hill has had an interesting life. She was born in New York City but spent her first seven years as a "navy-brat gypsy" before settling in New Orleans where her mother had grown up. She had eleven children in her first marriage, and when she was left a single mom she headed to graduate school where she met her second husband in a writer's group. Ursula, Under, the story of a girl trapped in an abandoned mineshaft or well in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, is Hill's first novel.
Hill mentioned "that geographical anomaly formerly known as New Orleans...."
She said her "second husband's grandfather died in a mine collapse...."
In the novel, a woman watching the news asks "Why are they wasting all that money and energy on that god-damn half-breed trailer-trash kid?" The rest of the book "is to answer that question," Hill said.
"... as if this were the first morning of the world...."
"... almost as if life were like a transit across a wee bit of land...."
"... too much hair for a two and a half year old to have had time to grow...."
"... sober as a church mouse, clear-spoken as a valedictorian...."
"... in weather as lovely as Eden's...."
"... he takes saunas seriously...."
"... this is, after all, hockey he is watching, and she might as well have asked him anything...."
"... otherness incarnate...."
"Finns and Norwegians did not worship together, even if both of them were Lutherans...."
"... the 80s were as distant as the glaciers...."
"'Nope, says Justin, 'birds are to fly.'"
"The deer, of course, will not be caught...."
"... afraid their voices will echo back at them from too deep an emptiness...."
"... and why in the name of anything would a well seem a relief...."
"Wandering into the forest, which is, after all, nowhere...."
"... his work boots seeming to shake the ground...."
"The bird's twittering seems obscene...."
"He feels as if he's going to throw up his innards...."
"'Yeah, right,' Jusin says, his eyes wide with terror...."
"... like a resurfacing memory...."
"... she cannot remember the names of the trees either...."
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