Critics' Opinion:
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Published Oct 2022
320 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Shimmering with rage and sparkling with subtle humor, Billie Starr's Book of Sorries showcases Edgar Award-nominee Deborah E. Kennedy's singular voice as Jenny, a heroine in the vein of Olive Kitteridge in Crosby, Maine and Miles Roby in Empire Falls, shines a light on the town of Benson, Indiana, where lakes, grudges, and family rifts run deep – but so does a mother's love.
Sometimes, a woman has to rescue herself.
Jenny Newberg, Queen of Bad Decisions, is about to make another one. In a small town where everyone knows everyone's business, down-on-her-luck single mother Jenny is on a first-name basis with the debt collector at the bank, who is moving toward foreclosure. She is constantly apologizing to her precocious young daughter, Billie Starr, who is filling a book with her mother's sorries, and it seems to Jenny that no apology will ever be enough.
Then a pair of strangers in black suits offers her a hefty check to seduce someone known as the Candidate. Finally, something will go her way.
But nothing ever goes as Jenny plans, and she is swept into the Candidate's orbit. Surrounded by a wide universe of new ideas, she realizes how constrained her life has been by the expectations of everyone around her, and she starts to see how much more she might be capable of. And when her world is rocked to its core and Billie Starr may be in danger, Jenny is forced to do what she once thought impossible: trust in herself and her own power to make things right.
"Kennedy follows her debut, Tornado Weather, with an enthralling suspense thriller...Exquisite prose matches deep characterization. Kennedy deserves to win an Edgar with this captivating sophomore effort." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Funny yet bitingly realistic look at small-town life…Kennedy excels at writing quirky characters and entertaining dialogue...A grim literary mystery and a hopeful family story, this genre-blending novel manages to be both charming and heartbreaking." - Kirkus Reviews
"Adeptly delves into the intricacies of interpersonal relationships within small-town life, much like Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge." - Library Journal
"Billie Starr's Book of Sorries is a book of righteous anger, a book of hard-earned hope, a book of laugh-out-loud humor, and, above all, a book of deep love—between mother and daughter, neighbor and friend, barback and grocer and a delightful cast of unlikely small-town bedfellows—but mostly between the reader and these wonderful pages." - Laurie Frankel, bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is
"A heartfelt and expertly crafted exploration of motherhood and finding the shimmering possibilities in oneself. Kennedy's writing cuts open small-town Midwestern America, delivering grit, gossip, and generational relationships that bleed through a life both as an anchor of familiarity and as a shackle against hope. A deeply empathetic and nuanced second novel, which solidifies Kennedy as a master of illuminating the intricacies, mythos, and pain of Main Street USA." - Sequoia Nagamatsu, bestselling author of How High We Go in the Dark
"A rollicking, zany novel about a single mother scraping by in small town America that examines the politics of power, beauty, and family." - Ash Davidson, acclaimed author of Damnation Spring
This information about Billie Starr's Book of Sorries was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Deborah E. Kennedy is a native of Fort Wayne, Indiana and a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Kennedy has worked as both a reporter and editor, and also holds a Master's in Fiction Writing and English Literature from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Tornado Weather was her debut novel.
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