Stringbean and the Grace of Dog
A novella by Geneva Zane
Little Stringbean, coming of age in a strange yet strangely familiar small town. Grown from a seed and raised as a miracle by a warm but distant religious cult leader and his reclusive and deeply depressed widowed companion, Stringbean struggles with the challenges created by her outsider upbringing. In a series of delicately compelling vignettes Stringbean and the Grace of Dog vividly brings into focus the heartbreaking vulnerability of a childhood played out on the dusty stage of a ruptured world.
“Stringbean, the undomesticated young heroine of Geneva Zane’s wonderful debut novella, will captivate you from the very first page. Gangly, difficult—this slightly savage little girl hurtles from one adventure to another in a world not quite ours, raw with loss and exaltation. Zane’s prose is a lyrical marvel, funny and tender, wise and wicked. She has captured in its rhythms the essence of childhood, in all its impulsive glory.”
—Michael Ives, author of The External Combustion Engine
“Welcome Stringbean, ‘wild, unconquerable’ Stringbean, who will challenge and capture your heart. And welcome Geneva Zane, a writer with kinetic talent and filled with a strange and beautiful wisdom. The miracle of Zane and her Peapod creation will give you hope—or, more accurately, fill you with the Grace of Dog—in this mean and loving world.”
—Susan Rogers, author of My Reach: A Hudson River Memoir
Cover art by Siolo Thompson
ISBN: 978-1-939056-16-0