The Virtues of Oxygen

by Susan Schoenberger

Overview

From the award-winning author of A Watershed Year comes a heartrending story of unlikely bonds made under dire straits. Holly is a young widow with two kids living in a ramshackle house in the same small town where she grew up wealthy. Now barely able to make ends meet editing the town’s struggling newspaper, she manages to stay afloat with help from her family. Then her mother suffers a stroke, and Holly’s world begins to completely fall apart.

Vivian has lived an extraordinary life, despite the fact that she has been confined to an iron lung since contracting polio as a child. Her condition means she requires constant monitoring, and the close-knit community joins together to give her care and help keep her alive. As their town buckles under the weight of the Great Recession, Holly and Vivian, two very different women both touched by pain, forge an unlikely alliance that may just offer each an unexpected salvation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781477822791
Publisher:	Amazon Publishing
Publication date:	07/22/2014
Pages:	229
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Susan Schoenberger is the author of the award-winning debut novel A Watershed Year. Before turning her attention to writing fiction, she worked as a journalist and copyeditor for many years, most recently at The Hartford Courant and The Baltimore Sun. She currently serves as the director of communications at Hartford Seminary and teaches writing classes at the Mark Twain House in Hartford. She lives in West Hartford, Connecticut, with her husband and three children.

Editorial Reviews

Beautifully written and achingly real, The Virtues of Oxygen quickly drew me in to the lives of Holly, a single mother, and Vivian, a polio survivor in an iron lung. Schoenberger skillfully intersects these women’s lives and creates an authentic, emotional, and at times, heartbreaking portrait of small-town life during the recession. A richly drawn meditation on loss, love, friendship, and most of all, what it means to breathe—and to fully live.” —Jillian Cantor, author of Margot

“Susan Schoenberger has crafted a powerful novel about a woman whose remarkable strength moves us to rethink our ideas of what it means to live a meaningful life. The Virtues of Oxygen is an incredible mosaic of deep friendship, courageous spirit, and yearning to break free of boundaries that are beyond our control. Beautifully written.” —Tina Ann Forkner, author of Rose House

From the Publisher