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My WorksThe Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia
W. W. Norton & Company Coming in September 2010 Narrator Gladys Cailiff is eleven years old in 1938 when a new schoolteacher turns Threestep, Georgia, upside down. A well-traveled young woman, Miss Grace Spivey believes in field trips, Arabian costumes, and reading aloud from her ten-volume set of One Thousand Nights and a Night. The real trouble begins when she decides to revive the annual town festival as an exotic Baghdad Bazaar. Miss Spivey and her project transform the lives of everyone around her: Gladys’s older brother Force (with his movie-star looks), their pregnant sister May (a gifted storyteller herself), and especially the Cailiffs’ African American neighbor, young Theo Boykin, whose creative genius becomes the key to a colorful, hidden history of the South. The fate of a camel driver on the Arabian Peninsula in 1916, the birth of a circus in the wake of Sherman’s army, the role of an enchanted pitcher in a ninth-century war, and the journey of an ingenious young Muslim from his African home to the coastal islands of Georgia—all these and other surprising stories come to light as The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia rides a magic carpet from a schoolroom in the South to the banks of the Tigris (and back again) in an entrancing feat of storytelling.
—Lynne Sharon Schwartz, author of The Writing on the Wall and Ruined by Reading “Wonderfully seductive, one of those rare books you disappear into wholly. It’s joyous, shamelessly funny, heartbreaking, and page after page it gives you what you didn’t expect. This is a novel you’ll want to hand deliver to a friend.” —David Long, author of the Inhabited World and Blue Spruce “Wonderfully engaging … a great tribute to the power of education, strong women and the fine art of storytelling… an intricate dazzling pattern of history and imagination and truth.” —Jill McCorkle, author of Going Away Shoes and Carolina Moon "Miss Jean Brodie finally meets her match in the delightful, charismatic Miss Grace Spivey. Mary Helen Stefaniak has created a generous, tender, witty, provocative novel." —Valerie Miner, author of After Eden and The Low Road “Set in the 1930s, The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia centers around one magical night when the Middle East comes radiantly to life in the deep South. Taking her cue from The Arabian Nights, Mary Helen Stefaniak has fashioned a sequence of stories within stories to uncover forgotten links in American history and to probe the myriad facets of prejudice. This unique novel delves into the nation’s recent past in order to caution us about the imminent future.” —Judith Kitchen, author of The House on Eccles Road and The Poets’ Guide to the Birds “I finished reading The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia early this morning and felt like I'd taken a wildly imaginative journey. I put down the last page and tried to think of the last time I'd been transported in quite the same way. Mary Helen Stefaniak is a highly original writer whose attention to detail doesn't keep her from far-flung plot twists and turns, nor wonderfully inventive names. The humor is broad on one level but then understated on another, which is authentically Southern. Congratulations on this rich, enjoyable novel.” –Mary Grey James, Women's National Book Association The Turk and My Mother
W.W. Norton & Company Winner of the 2005 John Gardner Book Award Four generations come to vivid life in pages spanning the entire 20th century, from the outer reaches of Siberia to the heartland of America. The sheer, indulgent pleasure of storytelling gives shape to this multi-layered comic novel about an immigrant family's secret history. "You don’t just read The Turk and My Mother," says Jane Glaser, book club coordinator at Next Chapter Books in Mequon, Wisconsin. “You participate in it, like one of the characters, eavesdropping on family secrets that may or may not be meant for your ears.” "Stefaniak's easy familiarity with the vernacular idioms of the old country and the new, and her respectful, zestful ear for different voices, create a world . . . at once magical and grounded in reality."--Publishers Weekly "Fans of Amy Tan and Carol Shields will revel in the themes of remembrance, forgiveness, family devotion and forbidden love."--Booklist "In this magical book, life and love triumph over loss and pain, and a big new literary talent arrives. For Stefaniak, as for Alice Hoffman, we come to recognize that we are all immigrants in the territory of the human heart, following the thread of love through the labyrinth that takes us home--a journey across continents and history that is hilarious, heart-breaking, and deeply touching."--Jonis Agee, author of Acts of Love on Indigo Road "The Turk and My Mother reinvents the family saga and the art of storytelling as we know it." --Lan Samantha Chang, author of Inheritance "The Turk and My Mother is a wild ride through a symphonic family history that carries you breathless with laughter and curiosity to a most satisfying conclusion." --Sandra Scofield, author of Occasions of Sin: A Memoir "The Turk and My Mother sparkles with originality, humor and insight. Mary Helen Stefaniak has a true gift for making the ordinary feel magical and the exotic feel hauntingly familiar. I love this novel!" --Eilzabeth Stuckey-French, author of Mermaids on the Moon Self Storage and Other Stories
New Rivers Press Winner of the Wisconsin Library Association’s 1998 Banta Award “Stefaniak puts her characters to the test and watches them exceed themselves.” --David Hamilton, author of Deep River “These are transformative tales. . . . The world around us is the same but we are changed, our awareness heightened, our empathy renewed.” --Sharon Oard Warner, author of Deep in the Heart A Different Plain
(University of Nebraska Press, 2004), edited by Ladette Randolph, includes the story, "Believing Marina," by Mary Helen Stefaniak. The authors of A Different Plain explore the Midwest, a vastness of small towns, corn, cattle, football, and family businesses. They also venture far afield, to desolate western lives, crowded urban relationships, poignant couplings, comic families, cross-country bus rides, and the worldly idiosyncrasies of characters everywhere. Original, spirited, and surprising, these contemporary stories depict a modern world on the move and extend the tradition of great fiction from Nebraska into the twenty-first century. In the Middle of the Middle West: Literary Nonfiction from the Heartland
(Indiana University Press, 2003), edited by Becky Bradway, includes the essay, “Positively 4th Street,” by Mary Helen Stefaniak. Stefaniak’s "Positively 4th Street" recalls people and events of her Milwaukee south-side neighborhood. It's one of 42 essays that take their inspiration from the Midwest -- not just its physical terrain but its emotional terrain as well. The writers are poets, novelists, filmmakers, and journalists; some came and stayed, some came and left. Others, like Stefaniak, were born and raised in the Midwest. |
Selected WorksNovel (September 2010)
The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia
A hidden history of the South emerges when a worldly teacher leads Threestep, GA, to reinvent itself as “Baghdad.” Novel
The Turk and My Mother
Hilarious and moving, a masterful debut novel about a Milwaukee immigrant family's secret history. Fiction (short stories)
Self Storage and Other Stories
In these nine stories, “the familiar world is both funnier and sadder than it seems.” --Kalamazoo Gazette Short Fiction
A Different Plain
Short stories by Nebraska writers edited by Ladette Randolph, with an introduction by Mary Pipher Creative Non-Fiction
In the Middle of the Middle West: Literary Nonfiction from the Heartland
A rich and comprehensive collection of literary writings about the Midwest. |
