Synopses & Reviews
Lum has always been on the outside. At eight, she was diagnosed with what we now call an intersex condition and is told she can't expect to marry. Now, at thirty-three, she has no home of her own but is shuttled from one relative's house to another--valued for her skills, but never treated like a true member of the family. Everything is turned upside down, however, when the Blue Ridge Parkway is slated to come through her family's farmland. As people take sides in the fight, the community begins to tear apart--culminating in an act of violence and subsequent betrayal by opponents of the new road. However, the Parkway brings opportunities as well as loss.
Review
"
Lum is an engaging portrait of a village in the Virginia Blue Ridge during the Great Depression. Lum's courageous journey to selfhood is profound and moving, and a metaphor for the process of self-acceptance necessary for anyone who doesn't fit into traditional social norms."
—Lisa Alther, author of Kinfolks
"Libby Ware has written with a rich new southern voice and captured the dying art of storytelling in her debut novel."
—Ann Hite, author of the award-winning Ghost On Black Mountain and Georgia Author of the Year, 2011
Synopsis
§ Promotion at BEA § National media push to trades, larger newspapers, women's glossies, LGBTQI media, feminist media, radio § Online publicity to literary websites, historical fiction websites § Blog tour § Book events in the South, targeting bookstores, libraries, and book clubs § Appearances at regional book festivals § Pushing trades for articles/interviews since the author is a bookseller § Author website and FaceBook page § Marketing to independent booksellers, book clubs
Synopsis
In Depression-era Appalachia, an intersex woman without a home of her own plays the role of maiden aunt to her relatives--until an unexpected series of events gives her the opportunity to change her fate.
About the Author
Libby Ware lived the first five years of her life in West Virginia, and spent some childhood summers in the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia. She is the owner of Toadlily Books, an antiquarian book business, and is also a book collector. The beginning of Lum, excerpted as a short story, "The Circuit," was published in Feminist Studies in 2009, and was a finalist in the Poets and Writers Award for Georgia Writers, judged by Jennifer Egan. Ware lives in Atlanta with her two dogs, Tilly and Robin, and a mile away from her partner, Charlene Ball.