Reconsidering Happiness - (Flyover Fiction) by Sherrie Flick (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The two silent Ss of Des Moines beckon twenty-three-year-old Vivette with a sexy finger, a promise. So, in the mid-1990s, she convinces Grandpa Joe-Joe to sell his Buick for twenty dollars, leaves behind her friends, her job at a hip New England bakery, and an affair with a married man, and moves to Iowa. Margaret, who left the same bakery years earlier on her own restless quest, offers pointers from her cautiously settled Nebraska life. In a story of lust and longing, love and loneliness, disappointment and desire stretching from the East Coast to the West, these two pioneering women navigate through secrets, lies, decisions, and compromises shared over pool tables, postcards, and shots of whiskey. Starting up, starting over, slowing down, they crisscross each other's lives like highways on a map, always escaping, flying toward a dreamt future, and trying to avoid the charted course.

Review Quotes

"Alternating between time and perspectives, and spanning the two coasts, this introspective, conversational, travelogue-like novel captures the pensive force driving the two women's personal journeys, and how the women are illuminated by sparks of reconciliation along the way."--Leah Strauss, Booklist-- (9/1/2009 12:00:00 AM)

"Flick's narrative descriptions of Nebraska are dazzling, as are her portrayals of food and working in a bakery. . . . Reconsidering Happiness is a thoughtful work for thoughtful readers, who enjoy fine literature."--Christopher Zoukis, kansascity.com-- (6/16/2010 12:00:00 AM)

"In her descriptions of food, the Nebraskan landscape, and the rhythms of work at a tourist town bakery, Flick indulges in sensual detail with pleasurable results."--Publishers Weekly

"Inviting, warm, rich and complex."--Sherri Hallgren, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette -- (8/30/2009 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

Sherrie Flick is author of the flash fiction chapbook I Call This Flirting and the short story collection Whiskey, Etc., a bronze prize winner for the Foreword INDIES best short story collection of 2017. Her work has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies including Ploughshares, Flash Fiction Forward, and New Sudden Fiction. A recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship and residencies from Ucross, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Atlantic Center for the Arts, she teaches in the MFA and Food Studies programs at Chatham University in Pittsburgh and serves as co-director of the Chautauqua Writers' Festival.