Cat Pleska and Joel Peckham Reading

“Strap on a life jacket and dive into this often perilous, at times funny, always poignant collection bubbling with the language of water. Ever present is the danger of drowning from inattentive caregivers, from white-water rapids or a bridge collapse into a roiling river. From fluid-filled lungs gasping with croup or pneumonia. But water also brings healing and an understanding that navigating tricky waters, whether literal or metaphorical, has made Cat the surest captain of her own life.”

~Marie Manilla, author of Patron Saint of Ugly

“In Gone the Sun, Peckham writes about his loving, sometimes fraught history with Manitou, a summer camp he and his father worked at for many years. As his father declines into dementia the middle-aged Peckham—still working summers at the camp between semesters as a college professor—muses upon time, upon loss, and the various selves we inhabit as we age. This is a beautiful, heartbreaking book, but heartbreaking in the most resonant, emotionally intelligent, and illuminating way possible.”

~Sue William Silverman, author, Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul