Americans in Space

Mary E. Mitchell

Thomas Dunne Books

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Life is a challenge for 36-year-old Kate Cavanaugh, high school guidance counselor to a motley group of at-risk students. Two years after finding her young husband dead in bed beside her, Kate’s storybook life has vanished, and she and her two children are still reeling. Her daughter Charlotte, once a sweet girl, has morphed into an angry, tattooed, tongue-studded teen; and Hunter, Kate’s four-year-old, keeps his feelings sealed tight inside and an empty ketchup bottle clasped to his heart. When a tragedy occurs at the Alan B. Shepard High School, it’s Kate who finds herself in need of counsel and guidance. What she does next catapults her and her family down an unfamiliar road, on a trajectory into space—toward understanding, forgiveness and healing.

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Americans in Space
ONEIf You Love SomethingHe died the way lots of people do. He just went to bed and didn't rise the next morning. He had the thickest head of black hair I've ever seen on a forty-two-year-old male. Had he not died, I'd have had a husband in my old age whose hairline hadn't even receded. Do you know how rare this is? It is a terrible thing to bury a husband who has a full head of hair.This, of course, is not what the children miss about him. Kyle was one of those perfect daddies, a man whose chest visibly swelled at the sight of his daughter on a soccer field or

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Praise for Americans in Space

Mitchell (Starting Out Sideways, 2007) arrestingly depicts a family consumed by grief.

Two years after the sudden death of her husband from an undiagnosed heart condition, Kate Cavanaugh’s family is virtually unrecognizable. Her daughter, Charlotte, has morphed into a sullen, tattooed teenager. Her four-year-old son Hunter, the book’s most affecting and lovable character, quietly toddles around clutching a ketchup bottle to his chest. The only person keeping the Cavanaughs functioning, it often seems, is their neighbor “Auntie Marge,” a wealthy tech geek with the body of a linebacker and a heart of gold. Kate’s professional success as a guidance counselor at Charlotte’s high school underscores her difficulties with her personal life. She effortlessly soothes the problems of the likable, charismatic misfits in the school’s “touchy feely” support group, but she is unable to have a conversation with her daughter that doesn’t devolve into yelling and slamming doors. Kate’s further breakdown after a school tragedy is painful to witness, but well handled by the author’s delicate description and organic dialogue. The myriad relationships—between mother and daughter, sister and brother, husband and wife, children and grandparents, friends and co-workers—are artfully rendered. The characters give the novel its shape; each acts as a window into seemingly inescapable grief and the strength required for revival. Mitchell keeps it honest by painting multidimensional people whose dark sides she’s willing to expose. Readers will be surprised at how quickly they are sucked into the Cavanaughs’ grief and how much they root for this small clan. The title alludes to the isolation and ungrounding of Kate, Charlotte and Hunter after a quarter of their family is unfairly taken away. Mitchell lets her characters drift further apart, their individual trials breaking our hearts until, mercifully, she brings them back down to earth.

Get out the tissues, but plan on reading this impressive, stirring novel straight through.

--Kirkus Reviews

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About the Author

Mary E. Mitchell

is author of  the novel Starting Out Sideways.  A writer of fiction, non-fiction and essays, she has published her work in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Minnesota Star Tribune, Contrary Magazine, The Writing Self, Family Circle, First for Women, and online at Kaplancollege.com. She is a recipient of the New England PEN Discovery Award for her novel, The Nearness of You. For years she has taught writing at the Joan Brack Adult Learning Center and Bethany Hill School, a living and learning community, both in Framingham, Massachusetts.  She lives with her husband in Massachusetts.

Mary E. Mitchell

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Available Formats and Book Details

Americans in Space
Mary E. Mitchell

Hardcover

Hardcover
St. Martin's Press
Thomas Dunne Books
October 2009
Hardcover
ISBN: 9780312372453
ISBN10: 0312372450
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 304 pages
$24.99

e-Book Agency

Learn more about this edition
e-Book Agency
St. Martin's Press
Thomas Dunne Books
October 2009
e-Book Agency
ISBN: 9781429939256
ISBN10: 1429939257
304 pages
$6.99
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