The heart-wrenching tale of a family in crisis and the therapist who makes the tough decision to save herself ➱ A Novel by Dawn Reno Langley Book Tour with Guest Post & Giveaway
Dawn Reno Langley
WOW! WOMEN ON WRITING TOUR
OF
Analyzing the Prescotts
Tour Begins February 5
Book Summary
Cotton Barnes, a Raleigh, NC, therapist, leveled by a client’s recent suicide, is struggling to resume her practice when she begins working with the Prescotts, a family fractured when the father comes out as transgender and begins transitioning. They relate their stories in their chosen voices, each family member’s narrative in a different format. Journals, social media, and other nontraditional narratives challenge Dr. Barnes’ therapeutic skills. While each member of the Prescotts dodge land mines behind the closed doors of her therapy office, the Raleigh, North Carolina area is rocked by a series of LGBTQ+ hate crimes. As Cotton finds herself stalking the family, worried that she might not be able to “save them,” her husband slips away, and Cotton is forced to make a decision that will determine whether she saves her own marriage or the Prescotts.
Publisher: Black Rose Publishing
Print length: 308 pages
Purchase a copy of Analyzing the Prescotts on
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Analyzing-Prescotts-Dawn-Reno-Langley/dp/1685133495
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.https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/201087344-analyzing-the-prescotts
Guest Post
Using Multiple Points of View and Voices
by Dawn Reno Langley
Atticus Fitch. Huck Finn. Rebecca. Offred. Lolita.
You can name the novels that featured these characters,
right? Why? Because their first-person narrator voices are memorable. When a
character tells their own story, it allows us insight that we, as readers,
would never get otherwise. That voice drives the narrative, providing a sense
of drama, because they’re letting us in on a secret we would not get otherwise.
They tell us their thoughts, their opinions about other characters, their
struggles with the story’s conflict, and that insight layers in a sense of
humanity. The first-person narration gives us a closer look at characters who
become human, thus reaching us in a way third-person point of view simply
can’t.
As a writer, I’m always searching for ways to bring magic
into my fiction. I study other writers’ works, especially the classics, old and
new. Some authors write amazing descriptions of setting or characters, while
others send shivers up my spine with suspenseful twists and turns in their
narrative, but the technique that makes stories come alive more than any other
is point of view. If a writer can dip into a character’s mind and bring that
person’s voice to the page, the character becomes a memory for me that doesn’t
fade with time. (I will always identify with Jo, the writer-sister in Louisa
Mae Alcott’s Little Women stories, though I read them when I was in
grammar school.)
One of the best contemporary examples of point-of-view
mastery is Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible. When I first read the
story of the Price family, the way Kingsolver used each of the family member’s
voice to show how they felt about moving from Georgia to the Congo amazed me. Each
of the children speaks about their struggles and challenges, which is difficult
since they range from 14 years to 5 years old. They are all distinct and their viewpoints
provide a texture to the story that we would not have heard otherwise. The
story is heavy, thematically, a retelling of the Bible itself, so Kingsolver’s
incorporation of the children’s opinions both lightens the story and the
multiple points of view produces a subtle nod to the different books in the
Bible. And their voices! Perfection.
I admired that story so much that I decided to exercise
my own writing chops and show each of the Prescotts, the family in my own
story, through their point of view voices. I knew I needed to do so in a way
that fit the contemporary themes in my own story, so I used social media, the
written word, and gaming to depict the characters themselves. Each of the
children is a unique individual searching for their identity in the family
while also finding their place in the world.
Because the story is told from the setting of the
therapist’s office, the multiple points of view had to be different in order
for readers to recognize each family member in the same setting. While they
shared their stories differently, each of the characters was part of the jigsaw
puzzle that is the Prescotts.
One of the many lessons I learned from writing this novel
is that I needed to close my eyes and listen to the characters rather than to
impose the narrative on them. Once I got into the space of truly hearing them,
they took my breath away, and they stole the story.
Hopefully, my readers will
agree.
About the Author
Dawn Reno Langley writes extensively for newspapers and magazines, has published more than 30 books (nonfiction, children’s books, and novels such as The Mourning Parade (Amberjack, 2017)), dozens of award-winning short stories, essays, and poems in journals such as Missouri Review, Hunger Mountain and Superstition Review, as well as hundreds of articles, theater reviews, and blogs. A Fulbright scholar and TedX speaker with an MFA in Fiction from Vermont College and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies (concentrations in gender studies and creativity) from The Union Institute and University, she lives on the North Carolina coast. She offers writing retreats for other women and teaches for Southern New Hampshire University’s MFA program. Her latest book, You Are Divine: A Search for the Goddess in All of Us (Llewellyn) was released nationally and internationally in January 2022.ADD AUTHOR BIO
You can follow the author at:
Website: www.dawnrenolangley.net
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dawnrenolangley/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/proflangley/
You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfSpOz4n17V06ZGei4SkXww
Join us at WOW as we celebrate the launch of Dawn Reno Langley's novel Analyzing the Prescotts.
Read an interview with the author and enter for a chance to win a copy of the book.
https://muffin.wow-womenonwriting.com
#analyzingtheprescots #novel #lgbtq #family #kindleunlimited #dawnrenolangley #wow
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