You can find my most recent author interview over at Dead Darlings.
Building on her critically acclaimed debut novel The Quickening, Michelle Hoover’s gripping, brilliantly crafted new release, Bottomland, follows the Hess family’s struggle to stay together on the Iowa plains following the mysterious disappearance of two family members during the years after World War I. According to Daphne Kalotay, “Bottomland is alive with secrets, hard choices, and the acute costs of independence.” Jenna Blum has compared Hoover’s work to Dreiser and Cather.
Matthew Gilbert, in his Boston Globe review, wrote, “There are many compelling things about Michelle Hoover’s potent new novel, Bottomland, not least of all her austere style and its visceral punch. Seriously, you might feel a few chills run up your spine while reading, as Hoover delivers stark passages about the frigid desolation on an Iowa farm in winter….But what struck me repeatedly is the way Hoover’s story, set largely in the immediate wake of World War I, has so much contemporary resonance.”
Michelle is the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University and teaches at GrubStreet, where she leads the Novel Incubator program. She is a 2014 NEA Fellow and has been a Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University, a MacDowell Fellow, and a winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award. The Quickening was a 2010 Massachusetts Book Award “Must Read.” A native of Iowa who lives in Boston, Michelle took time out from her launch to speak with Dead Darlings about her latest novel.