Beverly Jensen — The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay
News
The German translation of Sisters, Die Hummerschwestern (The Lobster Sisters) has climbed the chart of paperback bestsellers, based on glowing reviews. Readers find it heartwarming and are drawn to the story of a hardscrabble farm life a hundred years back. By August 2013, it reached # 2 on the bestsellers' list. The publisher is Verlagsgruppe Random House
To follow Beverly on the German charts, see www.buchreport.de/bestseller/taschenbuecher.htm
Italian Edition Published
Il Mondo Oltre La Baia (The World Beyond the Bay), is availabe from Neri Pozza Editore.
Richard Russo's New York Times Review
In the August 1 2010 New York Times Book Review, novelist Richard Russo (Nobody's Fool, Empire Falls) writes, "Beverly Jensen's book The Sisters From Hardscrabble Bay may be a collection of stories, but thanks to its chronological sweep (from 1916 to 1987), its multiple settings (from New Brunswick – so vividly rendered that it becomes another character – to Boston to coastal Maine) and a good half-dozen of the richest fictional characters I've encountered anywhere, the book delivers the emotional rush of a novel, indeed of a great novel."
Oprah Recommends Sisters!
August 2010's O. Magazine praised Sisters in "Sisterhood Is Powerful": It is the women you'll love, because their differences ... are eclipsed by the connectedness that comes from being both female and family."
Huffington Post Features Sisters
The Huffington Post "Books" page posted a blog by Beverly's husband, Jay Silverman, as the headline for July 10-11. Jay's article, "Saving the Stories of Beverly Jensen," tells how Beverly wrote Sisters and how various writers and editors brought it to the world.
Chapter in Remembering Westbrook
Andrea Vasquez's Remembering Westbrook: The People of the Paper City has just been published, a series of portraits of historic figures from Westbrook, Maine, and ends with a chapter about Beverly.
Advance Reviews
Sisters is winning praise from many quarters:
"This is an amazing novel composed of interconnected short stories about the lives of two sisters, from their harsh childhood in New Brunswick to their adulthood in Maine. The stories are expertly woven together to make a beautiful quilt of the sisters' struggles, mishaps, romances and triumphs. The author's intelligent humor and descriptive dexterity keep you thoroughly invested in the fate of these remarkable hardscrabble women."
—IndieBound
"Published posthumously, Jenson’s debut is a rich cycle-of-life narrative about the title’s two Canadian sisters, who grow up in rural poverty and make their way in the world, remaining close despite differences in disposition and ambition ... Straightforward yet lyric prose and an eye for the crucial detail bring the Hillocks’ world vividly to life."
—Kirkus Review
"From their rocky beginnings through their father's death and their own old age in 1986, the sisters' tale remains compelling."
—Library Journal
"This sure-to-please novel is a finely woven collection of stories about two extra-ordinary women who will surely steal your heart from the get-go. Their sibling rivalry, comic and touching, their secrets, their fears, and their dreams are all part of this wonderful story of family dynamics recognizable to all of us."
—The NorthShoreian
Amazon Advance Reviews
To see Amazon's advance customer reviews, go to: www.amazon.com/Sisters-Hardscrabble-Bay-Fiction/product-reviews/0670021660/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
Sisters: An Anthology
Beverly’s story “Idella’s Dress” appears in the new anthology Sisters from Paris Press, along with essays, stories, and poems by Margaret Atwood, Joan Baez, Simone de Beauvoir, Sadie and Bessie Delaney, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Walker, among others.