Debbie Harpham
from author’s website
Ginger Eager’s short fiction, reviews, and personal essays have been published in The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Jabberwock Review and elsewhere. Her short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and shortlisted in The Best American Nonrequired Reading series. Her first novel, The Nature of Remains, won the 2018 AWP Prize for the Novel.
Born and raised in Georgia, Ginger lives now in Decatur, just outside of Atlanta. She has a BSEd in Secondary English Education from the University of Georgia and an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington Writing Seminars. She teaches in college and community settings, and she enjoys working with both teens and adults.
ABOUT THE NATURE OF REMAINS:
In Flyshoals, Georgia, karma is writ small enough to witness. When Doreen Swilley discovers that her boss and lover of thirty years intends to fire her to placate his dying wife, she devises a plan to steal his business from him. Her plan just might work too, if she is not thwarted by a small town’s enmeshed histories and her family’s own dark secrets.
Set during the 2009 recession, The Nature of Remains rests at the intersection of class, gender, education and place. Through extended geological metaphor, readers witness the orogeny, crystallization, and weathering of the human soul. Doreen’s journey reveals the ways even a woman’s most precious connections—her children, her grandchildren, her lover—operate within larger social structures capable of challenging her sovereignty.
PRAISE AND RECOGNITION FOR THE NATURE OF REMAINS:
“With the wrenching simplicity of Kent Haruf and the dark southern lyricism of Daniel Woodrell, the author of The Nature of Remains has generated a story that’s tragic and restrained, piercing, compassionate, and incredibly wise in the ways of human nature. Like the amethysts that make up the book’s thematic core, the characters are shaped by powerful forces from within and without. They fracture and yield. They cleave blindly to the very patterns that will destroy them.” — Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife and Circling the Sun
“Eager’s evocative debut sings with the true cadence of the South. Her writing is sure and graceful, her characters both fully formed and flawed. Doreen Swilley is a feminist everyman, and her struggles to find justice and softness in the hardscrabble world Eager renders so truthfully broke my heart in all the best ways. The Nature of Remains is a story that will linger in your mind and heart, told beautifully by a writer of rare talent. Don’t miss it.” — Joshilyn Jackson, author of The Almost Sisters and The Opposite of Everyone
“The Nature of Remains is the excellent first novel by Georgia native Ginger Eager. Its characters ran true to me in a way that’s far too rare, full of telling details and never predictable. I literally didn’t want to put it down.”— Patterson Hood, Drive-By Truckers, writer and musician
“Ginger Eager is a fresh, unflinching voice in Southern literature. The Nature of Remains isn’t afraid to explore the complexities of domestic violence or poverty—or what women end up sacrificing as they try to avoid both. Doreen Swilley earns our compassion as the novel moves fiercely on, juxtaposing the past with the present, good intentions with bad decisions, and the struggle to love with the struggle to live. This a book that will keep you in its spell even as it breaks your heart.” — Anna Schachner, Author of You and I and Someone Else
AUTHOR VISITS:
Author visits with Ginger Eager are available via staging.novelsandbox.com/our-authors/.