Steps and Exes : A Novel of Family - Hardcover

On Laura Kalpakian's imaginary Isadora Island, women not only rule, they've been calling the shots since men first hunted (i.e., sat around campfires trading their B.S. stories) and women gathered (cooked, raised kids, cleaned up, etc.). At least, that's how Celia--grand dame, 1960s holdout, and advocate of unfettered love--sees it. In the world according to Celia, Eve wears the pants while Adam's alias is "first whiner." Perched at the tip of Useless Point, she lords over a quirky, cozy B & B, Henry's House, all the while extolling the virtues of independence and bristling at the notion of institutionalized love. That is, until one of her daughters announces she wants to tie the knot Martha Stewart-style, and Celia is called upon to host the event. In her desire to fulfill her daughter's whim, she transforms Henry's House into the magical hub for a far-flung, idiosyncratic, anything-but-nuclear family. And in this rarified air, guests assemble to raise glasses but instead reveal their deepest, darkest secrets. The trick allows Kalpakian to poignantly dramatize the inner struggle between autonomy and the sometimes cloying grasp of familial love--or, as Celia puts it, "the tie that binds all right. Enough rope to hang yourself."

Kalpakian's well-honed, lyrical prose is as intoxicating as "lavender and lemon, cinnamon and rose and something else, a whiff of what must have been--surely from some remembered Eden." Celia tells us that "God's opera has no sopranos," but after reading Steps and Exes, you'll beg to differ. --Sandra Dalrymple

Laura Kalpakian is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. Her novels include Graced Land, Caveat, and These Latter Days. Her stories have appeared in two collections, Dark Continent and Other Stories and Fair Augusto, which won the PEN/West Award for Best Short Fiction. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers' Award in both 1990 and 1992, and the first Anahid Literary Award for an American writer of Armenian descent. She lives in Washington state with her two sons.