Friday, June 12, 2015

Friday Freebie: Waveland by Simone Zelitch


Congratulations to Carl Scott, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: The Book of Laney by Myfanwy Collins.

In this week's book giveaway, three lucky readers will win a copy of Waveland by Simone Zelitch. Thanks to the publisher, The Head & and the Hand Press, for providing the copies of the book. Read on for more information about Waveland.


As Beth Fine would tell her daughter years after Freedom Summer, back in 1964, she was the girl who did everything wrong. She takes part in a wade-in to desegregate a public pool, and almost drowns. When she joins Northern volunteers to staff Freedom Schools and register voters in Mississippi, she speeds down a highway, hits a cow, and ends up in jail for prostitution. Beth believes in questioning authority, and her courage and commitment to social justice both define her and lead to her undoing. Alienated from her family, she still finds herself as an outsider in a movement that exposes the limitations of her good intentions. As she strives to transcend these limitations, her commitment deepens, her questions change, and the nature of authority and justice become harder to determine.

Blurbworthiness: "There has been surprisingly little fiction about the endlessly fascinating, necessary history of the civil rights movement, but Waveland is a compelling addition to that short bookshelf. In a variety of voices, Simone Zelitch has caught the complexity, the satisfactions, and the contradictions of those urgent times, and she's quite remarkably given us more than a little of the generations before and after. Brave actions have consequences and this moving novel does honor to those who bore them." (Rosellen Brown, author of Half a Heart and Civil Wars)

If you’d like a chance at winning Waveland, simply email your name and mailing address to

Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line.  One entry per person, please.  Despite its name, the Friday Freebie runs all week long and remains open to entries until midnight on June 18, at which time I’ll draw the winning name.  I’ll announce the lucky reader on June 19.  If you’d like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words “Sign me up for the newsletter” in the body of your email.  Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning?  Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter.  Once you’ve done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying “I’ve shared” and I’ll put your name in the hat twice.


at

3 comments:

  1. Myra Faye TurnerJune 13, 2015 at 7:46 PM

    When I was a young girl living in Mobile, Alabama, we used to visit Waveland. This was after desegregation. I remember the beaches, although I couldn't swim. I was happy to know that if I wanted to, I had the legal right to do so. I've been a time or two as an adult. It's a quaint little town.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Myra Faye TurnerJune 13, 2015 at 7:48 PM

    When I was a young girl living in Mobile, Alabama, we used to visit Waveland. This was after desegregation. I remember the beaches, although I couldn't swim. I was happy to know that if I wanted to, I had the legal right to do so. I've been a time or two as an adult. It's a quaint little town.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Simone ZelitchJune 16, 2015 at 9:12 AM

    I visted Waveland while I was researching this novel, and I did swim. Mostly, I sat on a dock. That was where movement people like Stokely Carmichael sat after a long day of hashing out issues at the conference there that gives my book its name. That was where folks gathered after Freedom Summer to talk about the future of the movement. I didn't know I was going to call the novel that until I saw the place and felt the power of what happened there.

    ReplyDelete