Sometimes my novels have positively elephantine gestation periods—and even that, in some cases, is an underestimate. A mother elephant carries her young for not quite two years; I have spent, in some cases, not quite two decades contemplating the tiniest seed of a story and wondering how it might grow into a novel. Moreover, in […]
Tag Archives: The Sandcastle Girls
By now, it may seem to you as if we have been commemorating the centennial of the Titanic’s epic sinking for, well, a hundred years. Perhaps you feel like Kate Winslet does when she hears Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” “Actually, I do feel like throwing up,” Winslet – a.k.a., Rose DeWitt Bukater […]
If you have 29 seconds. . . And that’s all it takes. . . You can watch a short video preview of my new novel, “The Sandcastle Girls.” Simply click here. It was produced by Doubleday Books. And if, after viewing it, you want to read more about the novel or pre-order it (No pressure!), […]
Since my mother-in-law died last year, the vertical post that shoulders our mailbox here in Lincoln has been getting a serious workout. My wife is the executor for her mother’s estate, and so she now receives her mother’s mail. And my mother-in-law, though dead ten months, still gets a lot of mail. Sondra Blewer is […]
The Academy Awards tonight could be a monumental evening for Oscar-nominated actresses Rooney Mara, Michelle Williams, and Jessica Chastain. Tomorrow, however, will be even better. Win or lose, Monday morning they all get to eat, probably for the first time since January. Make no mistake, a woman gives up a lot to win an Academy […]
“In his latest novel, master storyteller Chris Bohjalian explores the ways in which our ancestral past informs our contemporary lives–in ways we understand and ways that remain mysteriously out of reach. The Sandcastle Girls is deft, layered, eye-opening, and riveting. I was deeply moved.” —Wally Lamb I found myself looking at the copy-editted manuscript the […]
Here’s a sentence I never expected to write: This week marks my 20th anniversary writing a weekly column. The first “Idyll Banter” column appeared in this newspaper’s living section on Feb. 9, 1992. Actually, it wasn’t called “Idyll Banter” then. It was just my name and mug shot and 675 vaguely incoherent words wondering why […]
Among my favorite photographs of my father is an old black and white image that was taken when he was five years old. It’s a formal portrait from 1933: He is standing between his mother and father, and the three of them are impeccably coiffed. My grandfather is dressed the way I would remember him […]
