Trisha Portman has it all: brains, looks, loving friends, a great guy, and the dream job in the most hip New York gallery. When a painting suddenly arrives, Texas-born Trisha is driven back in time, remembering her college days and fellow student, James Morales, an embittered young man who bears the disfiguring scars-physically and psychologically-of his tenement youth. Years later, and with his cutting-edge composition stirring excitement and taunting Trisha, she decides to find him, to drag this artist from obscurity and into the world of painterly fame. When their meeting finally takes place, she uses her charm and a smidgen of artifice to force her way into his life. A cynical James resists her friendship and turns down the gallery's offer for a one-man show. In the character of James, Williams exposes his torment and drags the reader inside, helping us understand why this man is not only self-destructive, but almost blithely so.
During Trisha's quest to be his friend and perhaps heal him, she's dealt her own lethal blow: terminal cancer. And this is where the novel shifts to real life, or perhaps as close as any author is able to go.
Stephanie Williams, born in Texas, enjoying her life in Manhattan as a successful journalist, is nearing thirty and is told that she has cancer. How can this be? She's young, loves life, has great friends…and what about that dream of being a published author? Stephanie and a friend agree to write every day.
Fast-forward three years: Stephanie is dying, the novel is nearly finished, and her friends will do anything to make that dream a reality. They work with her, help her edit when she finds the energy. Ellie McGrath, friend, mentor and former boss, leaves her job, forms McWitty Press, and drives the project at top speed. With the help of a printer, whose entire team worked around the clock to achieve the impossible, the manuscript is taken through every stage in a matter of weeks, not months or a year. In the acknowledgment page, Stephanie writes that McGrath "…has provided the most remarkable gift anyone could possibly give me: the joy and peace that comes from knowing I will go to my deathbed a published novelist."
Stephanie Williams, born in Texas, enjoying her life in Manhattan as a successful journalist, is nearing thirty and is told that she has cancer. How can this be? She's young, loves life, has great friends…and what about that dream of being a published author? Stephanie and a friend agree to write every day.
Fast-forward three years: Stephanie is dying, the novel is nearly finished, and her friends will do anything to make that dream a reality. They work with her, help her edit when she finds the energy. Ellie McGrath, friend, mentor and former boss, leaves her job, forms McWitty Press, and drives the project at top speed. With the help of a printer, whose entire team worked around the clock to achieve the impossible, the manuscript is taken through every stage in a matter of weeks, not months or a year. In the acknowledgment page, Stephanie writes that McGrath "…has provided the most remarkable gift anyone could possibly give me: the joy and peace that comes from knowing I will go to my deathbed a published novelist."
Readers will be hard-pressed to find a more moving death-bed narrative. As Trisha bemoans dying young, never experiencing the joy of motherhood, her words evoke all of our fear of dying young, before we can check off those items on our To-do list.
Stephanie Williams died on July 3rd, at the age of thirty-three, and Enter Sandman is her child. It is delivered from heart and womb, now held up for all to see and admire.
I doubt that reviewers are supposed to say this, but I urge you to buy the book. 30% of the proceeds will be donated to cancer research.
Stephanie Williams died on July 3rd, at the age of thirty-three, and Enter Sandman is her child. It is delivered from heart and womb, now held up for all to see and admire.
I doubt that reviewers are supposed to say this, but I urge you to buy the book. 30% of the proceeds will be donated to cancer research.
