KQED Public Radio's Forum presents California Reading, a radio book club featuring fiction about California and by California authors. Each month, listeners are invited to read a selected book and share their thoughts online and during a special hour of Forum.
February 2004
Book Selection: The Dive From Clausen's Pier
by Ann Packer
From the publisher:
How much do we owe the people we love? Is it a sign of strength or weakness to walk away from someone in need? These questions lie at the heart of Ann Packer's intimate and emotionally thrilling novel, which has won its author comparisons with Jane Hamilton and Sue Miller. At the age of twenty-three, Carrie Bell has spent her entire life in Wisconsin, with the same best friend and the same dependable, easygoing, high school sweetheart. Now to her dismay she has begun to find this life suffocating and is considering leaving it -- and Mike -- behind. But when Mike is paralyzed in a diving accident, leaving seems unforgivable and yet more necessary than ever. The Dive from Clausen's Pier animates this dilemma-and Carrie's startling response to it-with the narrative assurance, exacting realism, and moral complexity we expect from the very best fiction.
About the author:
Ann Packer received the Great Lakes Book Award for "The Dive from Clausen's Pier," which was a national bestseller. She is also the author of "Mendocino and Other Stories." She is a past recipient of a James Michener award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and other magazines, as well as in Prize Stories 1992: The O. Henry Awards. She lives in Northern California with her family.
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