Pocketful of Poseys
by Thomas Reed
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Pub Date Sep 19 2023 | Archive Date Oct 10 2023
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Description
When your dying mother has one last request, how can you say no?
Grace Tingley and Brian Posey are forty-something twins whose lives have gone in very different directions. Grace, now a private school teacher in coastal Connecticut, was a PhD candidate at Yale when an unexpected pregnancy threw her plans into a tailspin. Brian, an adventure travel executive in Seattle, barely scraped through an obscure New England college and recently married Ella, after three years in an intimate relationship with a charismatic man from Jamaica.
When their widowed mother Cinny, a charter member of Woodstock Nation, is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, Grace and Brian are there for her last days in hospice care. This is where Cinny reveals her staggering plan for the siblings: They’re to sprinkle her ashes, mixed with their father’s, at a series of exotic locations around the globe—some remote, some challengingly public, all known and loved by the Poseys.
Joined by their own immediate families, Grace and Brian set off on a funereal odyssey that uncovers more about their parents’ relationship, and themselves, than the twins find it easy to admit.
By turns hilarious, profound, jarring, and poignant, Pocketful of Poseys bounds dizzily across the United States to New Zealand, Thailand, Italy, and more, as the last of Cinny Posey’s secrets are exposed, and her survivors are forced to confront the strength of the ties that bind them all together—for worse and for better.A Note From the Publisher
Thomas Reed taught literature, film, and writing at Dickinson College for thirty years. His first novel, Seeking Hyde, grew out of courses he taught on Robert Louis Stevenson’s celebrated novel and was named Finalist in the 2018 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Historical Fiction. Pocketful of Poseys draws more broadly on his experience growing up in an academic family; his education at Yale, the University of Virginia, and Oxford; years spent living in Rome and Christchurch, N.Z.; circum-global travels with his wife and children, and courageous decisions made by his mother-in-law as she faced her death. He and wife Dottie now split their year between Sarasota, Florida, and Camp Pemigewassett, a summer camp for boys in New Hampshire that they co-own.
Advance Praise
“. . . moving . . . . engaging . . . . The story is fast-paced, giving the reader the feel of the family’s rapid travel through Asia and Europe . . . . This upbeat story triumphs thanks to its veracity and memorable characters.”
—Kirkus Reviews
"Simultaneously heartwrenching and comical, Thomas Reed’s novel Pocketful of Poseys follows a family from the death of their matriarch to their journey to scatter her ashes. . . . Subtle and meaningful . . . ."
—Foreword Reviews
“We have the Durrells of Corfu, the Wapshots of St. Botolphs, and now the Tingleys of New Hampshire—the rockbound land of Live Free or Die. Witty, dark, picaresque, and joyously contrarian, the saga of the Tingley family will warm your heart, make you cringe, and ultimately lift your spirit. Another outstanding novel from Thomas Reed.”
−ROBERT OLMSTEAD, author of Savage Country
“Tom Reed is a raconteur of the best and rarest kind: a spell-binding, curl-up-in-your-armchair-and-let-the-afternoon-slip-away storyteller. Turn the wi-fi off, put the kettle on, and let his storytelling carry you - into the past, around the world, and down every channel of human experience from the heart-breakingly sad to the side-splittingly funny.”
−SUSAN CHOI, author of Trust Exercise
"The old advice has it that great novelists should be great noticers. If so, then Thomas Reed is of the first rank. POCKETFUL OF POSEYS abounds with the warp and weft of the contemporary, often with a comic awareness of how these fabrics are woven in. But for me it is the outbursts of wisdom and poignancy, often completely unexpected in his dramatic scenes, that are the even greater achievement. Thus, maybe the thing Reed notices best, when one comes to the end, is how family is always forged in change. To read POCKETFUL OF POSEYS is to experience this startling thought, so relevant to what makes fiction meaningful, anew."
−RICK MOODY, author of The Ice Storm and Hotels of North America
“…a clever dark comedy that mines heavy topics with a light touch. Reed takes us on a hilarious family trip, rife with sibling rivalry and generational conflict, to four continents, all to unearth long held family secrets one envelope at a time. Enjoy the ride!
−TESS CALLAHAN, author of April and Oliver and Dawnland
“A poignant and entertaining family odyssey that takes the reader all across the globe with the grown children and grandchildren of Cinny Posey and her husband Frank as they scatter the couple’s ashes, fulfilling Cinny’s wishes and revealing the secrets she couldn’t share in her lifetime.”
−VIRGINIA PYE, author of The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann
“… a tour de force and a tour of the world that takes you out of your comfort zone and into the shadowy secret life of a mother who sacrificed again and again.”
−TERESA SORKIN, author of Lacie’s Secrets
"Grippingly poignant and elegantly profound, Pocketful of Poseys will have you laughing one moment and crying the next as you journey with the adult children of the Posey family to scatter their parents’ ashes across the globe. A must read for anyone who has ever experienced—life."
−LIZ MACCIE, author of Lessons I Never Learned at Meadowbrook Academy
"…delightful….will have you laughing and crying from the very first chapter."
−TULLAN HOLMQVIST, author of The Woman in the Park and Lacie's Secrets
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780825310263 |
| PRICE | $17.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 370 |
Available on NetGalley
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