The opening, with Bertha in the cemetery, is one of the later additions. Nearly anything that reads as traditional plot came in towards the end (I think in the version you first read completely different people found her). I feel as though I always need a bit of weird material to wrap a novel around, or else I would just describe furniture and mustaches. And just before I started to write, I decided to put a bowling alley in it. I went through my grandfather’s genealogies and I pulled out names the names became the characters. Michener Chair in Fiction at the University of Texas, AustinĮlizabeth McCracken: The first thing I knew was that I wanted to write across generations, something that felt like a genealogy - that was before I had even written a word. Did you think, I really want to write a novel about candlepin bowling, or, I really want to write a multi-generational saga, or, I see this woman Bertha Truitt asleep in a snowy cemetery? Elizabeth McCracken is the author of six books, including Thunderstruck & Other Stories (winner of the 2015 Story Prize), and also holds the James A. I just wonder what the original idea was. –AnnĪnn Patchett: There is so much going on in this novel, so many people, so many changing attitudes, so much time. The big event happens on February 22, when we’ll be in conversation at the store. Elizabeth McCracken is at the top of my list of people I’m always longing to see, so this is a double cause for celebration: first, the publication of her wonderful new novel, Bowlaway, and second, that she’s coming to Parnassus. What’s the best reason I know to co-own a bookstore? It means I get to see my most beloved friends when they publish their books.

Bowlaway elizabeth mccracken