Sep 7, 2021 | Blog
In his office at the university John sat hunched over my manuscript, breathing clouds of tobacco smoke over the words. In one hand his pipe, in the other a pencil. Every so often he jotted something in the margin. It was like sitting in a dentist’s chair and being...
Jun 21, 2021 | Blog
Three weeks after that dinner, John was still trying to bolster me up—this time after my novel was rejected on its first trip out and another long piece of fiction still wasn’t coming right after two years of work. “I know,” he said, “how hard it is being a writer. ...
Apr 7, 2021 | Blog
“Gardner here.” A British accent, it seemed. A soft, yet I’m-busy-what-is-it? voice. I almost hung up. I’d been trying all week to reach him but had gotten only an empty burring ring from some outmoded phone system. Now this—John Gardner answering on the second...
Brussels, Belgium
Newsboys charge the platform, their cries a racket of startled birds. Allemand Ultimatum . . . Alle-mand Ulti-matum . . . Alle-mand . . . Alle-mand Ulti ma tum . . . Papers flap above their heads, explosions of white wings. Disembarking passengers press forward. Clots form. Movement stalls.
“What is it, monsieur?” Marie-Thérèse asks, all but shouting. “Do you know?” They have been scanning the arrivals from Ostend.
The elderly man is a little deaf. He’s also laconic to a legendary degree. “L’Allemagne encore.” His eyes are on the agitated crowd.
Germany again. Fragments of an old history lesson rise murkily through layers of other old lessons. The Franco-Prussian War—the cause of which does not rise murkily. She does recall, though, that just over a month ago, a young Serb shot the Archduke of Austria-Hungary, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife Sophie while they were in an open car on their way to visit a hospital in the Yugoslavian capital of Sarajevo. Both died. An event sending the Brussels newsboys flying then, too, shrieking and flapping their papers. And ever since, newspapers have been carrying predictions of another war, one potentially greater than any previously fought.
“Does it have anything to do with us? Aren’t we neutral?”
“Efficacement.” Extending his right arm, he slashes at the air.
“Do you mean their efficiency?”
He gives a curt dip of the chin.
“So, maybe she decided to stay in England. I don’t know if I—”
The old man surges forward, waving his cap, Marie-Thérèse in his wake. Approaching a tall woman in cream-colored linen who’s been making slow progress toward them, he holds his cap over his heart and bows.
“Bonjour, Monsieur Wojtasczek,” she responds and, turning to Marie-Thérèse, “mademoiselle Hulbert. You came too. How nice.”
Marie-Thérèse, trained in observation, detects an incipient frown held in check. She detects withheld criticism—and a miasma of disapproval. . . . you came too when you might have been doing something useful, such as studying or even taking the dogs for their walk? How nice.
“I . . . had some free time and I . . . so I asked the gardener . . . but I should not have presumed . . . Pardonnez-moi, Matrone, s’il vous plaît.”
“No, no, it’s fine.”
They retrieve the matron’s trunk from a baggage trolley and then in breezy sunlight on the Place Rogier, the gardener waits in line to buy a newspaper. When the matron, breaking an awkward silence, asks about her two dogs, Marie-Thérèse, still shaken, rattles off their latest exploits.
“I’m glad they’re well.”
In the backseat of the school’s Landaulet, the matron raises her newspaper. Marie-Thérèse wishes she had one—to hide behind. Why in the world had she asked to go along to the station? True, she was excited to begin her third and final year at the nursing school. True, she’d been free that morning, and a thunderstorm at dawn had swept through, leaving behind glitter and balmy warmth, and she’d felt some altogether uncharacteristic surge of euphoria. And further true, she worshipped the woman and was anxious to see her again, given all the war rumblings. And so, voilà, yet another mistake.
How ironic. She’d failed at her piano studies because she hadn’t been impulsive enough. Your playing is too stiff, mademoiselle. Take more risks. But risk-taking meant mistakes, no? They were kind enough and tried to explain—and demonstrate. All of it lost in the pulsing roar in her ears.
She pries a speck of lint from her gabardine skirt. Mistakes—she hates them. And the cascade of foreboding they bring on.
Turning to the window, she brushes each eye clear. The boulevard, strangely, has become a parade route of sorts. Automobiles, horse carts, trams, even bicycles, all fancied up with red and yellow flowers. Women are tying bouquets to lampposts and horses’ bridles. Young girls wear crowns of marigolds. A man on a bicycle, just then passing the slower-moving Landaulet, has two strings of onions in hand, each with yellow and red ribbons. Church bells clang at every block. Newsboys chant at every corner. Along sidewalks people are embracing and gesturing. Belgian flags drape windowsills, balconies, and shop fronts, their vertical red, yellow, and black bars puffed and rippling like sails. And sheets of newsprint are skidding along sidewalks into wet gutters.
Ribbons, flags, people, newspapers, traffic—everything that day, August 1, 1914, in motion.
Why are people celebrating?
She’s afraid to ask.
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Amazon
The woods on opening day of deer season in upstate New York, a northern Michigan tourist stop featuring dinosaurs, an oil tank in a flat midwestern town, Hawaiian lava cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean—these become places of vision for Joanna Higgins’ characters in The Importance of High Places, her debut collection. The obsessions of each of these widely diverse people describe their search for meaning and integrity in their lives. Each reaches that high place in the heart where the view of life is all-encompassing, the flawed and incomplete redeemed.
“Fascinating tales of spiritual transcendence in generally humble surroundings. . . .
Higgins’s concerns center on issues of guilt and absolution, spiritual release, confrontation with one’s own mortality, and the deeper meaning behind life’s ordinary gestures. She renders the experiences of her characters—many of them old, often Polish, and usually Catholic—with a refreshingly masterful hand. A memorable experience, and a writer to watch.
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
“The four short stories and novella that make up this debut collection are set against nature at its most alluring. Presented as objects of passion, nature and place both become inextricably bound with character. . . . All these stories share a romantic reverence for nature reminiscent of an earlier era. Highly recommended.”
—LIBRARY JOURNAL
“This slender volume has the potency of a concentrate. It consists of four stories and a novella, and each tale conjures up characters of remarkable freshness and grace.”
—BOOKLIST
“Throughout the collection, Higgins’ ability to convey her characters’ anguish and their hope make The Importance of High Places a striking debut.”
–THE BLOOMSBURY REVIEW
“In this debut collection. . . author Joanna Higgins writes about the lives of men—men on the edge of the abyss, drawn back by visions, real or imagined. . . . These are haunting stories of the heart.”
—MICHIGAN BOOKSHELF
“Higgins’s world is rich with imagery, interesting people we cannot forget, and with delicate, subtle detail. You find yourself rereading her stories.”
–ACADEMIC LIBRARY BOOK REVIEW
Newsboys charge the platform, their cries a racket of startled birds. Allemand Ultimatum . . . Alle-mand Ulti-matum . . . Alle-mand . . . Alle-mand Ulti ma tum . . . Papers flap above their heads, explosions of white wings………
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Hardcover
Available through Milkweed Editions
Amazon
eBook: Kindle
NOOK Book, Barnes & Noble
A surprising friendship develops between Eugenie, an escapee from the French Revolution, and Hannah, a Quaker girl, when they unite in the cause against slavery in this adventuresome tale of true nobility set amidst the rugged, eighteenth-century Pennsylvania wilderness.
In this wild place away from home, Eugenie and Hannah find more in common than they first realize. With much to learn from each other, the girls unite to help free several slaves from their tyrannical French owner, a dangerous scheme that requires personal sacrifice in exchange for the slaves’ freedom.
A story of friendship against all odds, Waiting for the Queen is a loving portrait of the values of a young America, and a reminder that true nobility is more than a royal title.
“French aristocrats in Early America? Quaker carpenters and housemaids? Slaves in New England? I never knew, but Joanna Higgins brings to life their story through three very different girls who grow into courage, wisdom, tolerance, and friendship. Their story is exciting, touching, and so real that I didn’t want it to end, and neither will you.”
—KAREN CUSHMAN
“A well-rounded satisfying historical tale.
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
“A meticulously detailed work of historical fiction about the challenges of the new and unfamiliar, and about looking beyond oneself toward the greater good.”
—PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY
“Deserving of readers’ interest and sympathy, these two girls transform miraculously under the gifted hand of Joanna Higgins…Occasionally poetic language and themes of true human compassion, liberty, and courage top off this remarkable historical piece for middle school and, perhaps, early high school readers.”
—ForeWord REVIEWS
“This is a story worth reading, and certainly history worth knowing.”
—MARGARET BRENNAN NEVILLE, THE KING’S ENGLISH BOOKSHOP, SALT LAKE CITY, UT
Newsboys charge the platform, their cries a racket of startled birds. Allemand Ultimatum . . . Alle-mand Ulti-matum . . . Alle-mand . . . Alle-mand Ulti ma tum . . . Papers flap above their heads, explosions of white wings………
Publisher: The Permanent Press
Hardcover
Available through The Permanent Press
Amazon
eBook: Kindle
NOOK Book, Barnes & Noble
Twenty years after a shooting death deemed accidental, a respected pediatrician is charged with murdering his friend. In those intervening years, the pediatrician, Dr. Benjamin Weber, has married his friend’s widow and adopted their two children. And during those years he has proven himself to be a devoted father and spouse as well as a trusted physician.
Dr. Weber pleads innocent, and his wife believes him. His grown daughters Laura and Lin believe him. Or do they?
As the novel evolves, the mystery at its center deepens into an exploration of divided loyalties and precarious family relationships, of children’s need to believe in conflict with their desire for truth.
This suspenseful novel combines elements of the conventional murder mystery and courtroom drama but goes beyond these to that greater drama—of the conflicted human heart.
“Gracefully unwound, skillful storytelling.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
“The novel is somewhat reminiscent of Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent . . . . A very well-crafted novel.”
—BOOKLIST
“Higgins’s psychologically acute story deftly illuminates the complexities that bind and separate an American family.”
—PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY
“Although it bears all the trappings of a taut legal thriller, this is, at heart, a riveting existential meditation on living with uncertainty.”
—NEW YORK JOURNAL OF BOOKS
Newsboys charge the platform, their cries a racket of startled birds. Allemand Ultimatum . . . Alle-mand Ulti-matum . . . Alle-mand . . . Alle-mand Ulti ma tum . . . Papers flap above their heads, explosions of white wings………
Publisher: The Permanent Press
Hardcover
Available through The Permanent Press
Amazon
eBook: Kindle
NOOK Book, Barnes & Noble
This historical novel dramatizes the interplay of forces leading to the assassination of an American president at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Through linking first-person narratives, the novel explores the interrelated lives of fictional as well as historical figures, mainly Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, William McKinley, and McKinley’s assassin Leon Czolgosz, at a turbulent time in American history, a time of protests, hangings, hunger riots, strikes, bombings, and massacres.
Although a tragedy in part, The Anarchist also depicts the permutations of love, idealism, and coming of age in the time of anarchism in the United States, while evoking parallels to contemporary economic and social issues.
“The Anarchist paints a vivid picture of the tumultuous times surrounding the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901, a period during which anarchists and their fiery anti-capitalist rhetoric were particular objects of fear and suspicion in the American imagination. Focusing heavily on prominent anarchist leader Emma Goldman and her frustrated devotee Leon Czolgosz, McKinley’s assassin, Higgins creates a powerful tapestry of diverse first-person narratives that poses intriguing questions about American values, particularly the right to free speech and the often murky relationship between one person’s words and another person’s actions. VERDICT: Higgins employs short chapters and switches frequently among the book’s many perspectives, successfully giving the reader a balanced view not only of an exciting and often overlooked period in American history but also of the controversial characters at the heart of her story. Highly recommended for historical fiction fans. . . .”
—LIBRARY JOURNAL
“Higgins turns in another memorable performance with this historical novel that looks at the years leading up to the assassination of President William McKinley. . . . the author carefully traces her characters’ trajectories from the 1880’s to the president’s assassination, showing how ideology—anarchism is a political philosophy; it’s not synonymous with terrorism—can be interpreted, some might say twisted, by a man whose intentions may be honorable, even if his actions are indefensible. A highly intelligent novel, one that demands readers pay close attention to the various threads of the story as the author weaves them together.”
—BOOKLIST
Newsboys charge the platform, their cries a racket of startled birds. Allemand Ultimatum . . . Alle-mand Ulti-matum . . . Alle-mand . . . Alle-mand Ulti ma tum . . . Papers flap above their heads, explosions of white wings………
Publisher: The Permanent Press
Hardcover
Available through The Permanent Press
Amazon
eBook: Kindle
NOOK Book, Barnes & Noble
In the Spring of 1864, all prisoner-of-war exchanges between the North and the South had ceased. Being condemned to the overcrowded prison camps was tantamount to a death sentence.
Ira Cahill Stevens, a young Union soldier captured by Confederates during the Battle of the Wilderness, finds himself fighting a new battle as A Soldier’s Book opens—one waged within the head and heart against “the dead nothingness of despair.” The prison camps, with their notorious “dead lines,” create a kind of extreme metaphor for our own times, for even in the most horrendous and circumscribed of situations, there is choice.
A historically accurate and profoundly moving novel, A Soldier’s Book is not only a vivid portrayal of the disease, misery, terror, and death in prisoner-of-war camps, including Andersonville, but also a testament to the strength of the human spirit.
“A novel of uncommon power, a provocative look at the souls of men under incredible, almost unendurable, circumstances.”
–THE DENVER POST
“Like Charles Frazier in Cold Mountain, Higgins manages to create through one small story a lyrical snapshot of an entire nation in mortal turmoil.”
–PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY (starred review)
“This novel ranks with MacKinlay Kantor’s 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning Andersonville in depicting the barbarism and pain of prison life during the Civil War.
–BOOKLIST (starred review)
“This remarkable debut novel, laced with historical detail, delivers a riveting portrait of the mental and physical toll of that gruesome internment. . . . Though Higgins’s taut prose is unsparing in its cruel detail, she ultimately delivers a message of hope.”
–PEOPLE
“Joanna Higgins has crafted a spare, intense, incredibly moving debut novel, a Civil War drama in which historically accurate details bring fictional characters to resonant life. . . . Not only a harrowing reminder of the brutality we visit upon one another, but a memorable paean to the noble bent of the human spirit.”
–SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
Newsboys charge the platform, their cries a racket of startled birds. Allemand Ultimatum . . . Alle-mand Ulti-matum . . . Alle-mand . . . Alle-mand Ulti ma tum . . . Papers flap above their heads, explosions of white wings………