Everywhere the Undrowned - (Great Circle Books) by Stephanie Clare Smith (Paperback)

About the Book

"Holding on is all fourteen-year-old Stephanie Clare Smith can do when she's left home alone in New Orleans during the summer of 1973. As she seeks to ease her loneliness through her summer algebra class, the city itself, and her friendship with a streetcar operator, adults fail her again and again with devastating consequences. Dreamlike and beautifully paced, this lyrical debut memoir traces that harrowing summer and its repercussions throughout Stephanie's life, including as a caregiver for the mother who abandoned her and in her career as a custody mediator through the court system. Through a mosaic of trauma and transcendence, poverty and neglect, and solitude and longing, Smith reveals how she used her imagination to connect to a world that had largely left her behind. Her hard-won survival echoes that of countless other survivors whose stories are never told, and her strength stands as a testament to the powers of empathy and love"--

Book Synopsis

This is what it is to survive. You find what floats and you hold on. Even if it is smaller than you.

Holding on is all fourteen-year-old Stephanie Clare Smith can do when she's left home alone in New Orleans during the summer of 1973. As she seeks to ease her solitude through her summer school algebra class, her wandering in the city, and her friendship with a streetcar operator, adults--particularly men--fail her again and again, with devastating consequences.

Dreamlike and beautifully paced, this lyrical debut memoir traces the events of one harrowing summer and its repercussions throughout Stephanie's life, including her work with families in crisis and as a caregiver for the mother who abandoned her all those years ago. Through a mosaic of trauma and transcendence, memory and metaphor, scarcity and neglect, Stephanie reveals how she built connections in and to a world that had largely left her behind. Her hard-won survival echoes that of countless other survivors whose stories are never told, and her strength stands as a testament to the power of creativity.

Review Quotes

"Everywhere the Undrowned is, somewhat unbelievably, Smith's first book . . . . [it's] a kind of prose poetry that recalls the work of famed writers like Denis Johnson and Raymond Carver . . . . not only a compelling memoir but a work of literature."--Washington Post Book World

"Everywhere the Undrowned offers an account of trauma and its aftermath more acute than any I have read. Reminiscent in places of Sylvia Plath at her sharpest and most bleakly funny, it deserves to become a classic."--Emma Brockes, author of She Left Me the Gun: My Mother's Life Before Me

"'I turned loneliness into trees and trees into dancers, ' Stephanie Clare Smith writes in this gut-punching and gorgeous memoir. While there's trauma in these pages, Smith traverses the spaces of an abundant imagination that made survival possible."-Robin Hemley, author of Oblivion: An After Autobiography

"A keen insight into why it takes so long for women to speak out: it takes years of living with the memory of trauma to understand how it continues to silence you and shape your life."--Psychology Today

"A memoir of trauma, escape, recovery, and the winding, crooked path of secret-keeping."--INDY Week

"A remarkable, understated memoir . . . . New Orleans is well worked over as literary territory, but Smith gives it new life . . . . a tribute to women who did what they had to, to survive abuse, yet still held on to their inner cores."--Wilmington Star-News

"Each paragraph reads like a poem but urges you forward like the most compelling novel."--Bitter Southerner

"In lyrical, metaphor-rich prose fragments that mine the cosmos, television, and avian life for meaning, Smith offers a harrowing yet hopeful look at the long road to recovery. This cathartic personal history is difficult to shake."--Publishers Weekly

"Lyrical, haunting, and deeply moving. . . As gut wrenching as it is enchanting, as stunning as it is deeply imaginative. Smith's story is an interrogation, a reclamation, a love story to the self, and a testament to the hard work of healing, and it will break you and enchant you and astonish you in all the most beautiful ways."--North Carolina Literary Review

"This stunningly lyrical memoir is a profoundly insightful glimpse into the complex and frightening consequences of parental neglect. As Smith's voice naturally evolves from alienated to intensely present, the impressively concise narrative alternates between ethereal observations about everything from space to spiders and gut punches of pain, shame, revelation, and redemption . . . . A masterful literary memoir about caring for those responsible for our trauma."--Kirkus Reviews (STARRED review)