My Radio Radio - Paperback

by Jessie Van Eerden (Author)

Back Jacket

The members of Dunlap Fellowship of All Things in Common share everything from their meager incomes to the only functioning toilet in the community house-- everything, that is, except secrets. When Omi Ruth Wincott, the youngest member of the disintegrating common-purse community in this small Indiana town, loses her only brother, Woodrun, she withdraws from everyone and fixates on a secret desire: She wishes only for an extravagant head- stone to mark Woodrun's grave, an expense that the strict, parsimonious community can't--or won't--pay for. In her loneliness, Omi Ruth's only ties to the world remain her National Geographic magazines and a new resident in the house, Northrop, an old man caught between living and dying, maintained in a vegetative state by hospice care.

Observing everything with the keen eye of a girl with a photographic memory, Omi Ruth finds herself learning to grieve in the company of unlikely strangers. With the help of a homeless and pregnant Tracie Casteel, a rebellious Amish boy named Spencer Frye, and the smooth-talking Vaughn Buey who works third shift at Dunlap's RV plant, Omi Ruth discovers that there are two things of which there is no shortage in the world's common purse--love and loss.

Author Biography

Jessie van Eerden holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa. Her debut novel Glorybound won Foreword Reviews' fiction prize. Her work has appeared in The Oxford American, Bellingham Review, Best American Spiritual Writing, and other publications. She directs the low-residency MFA program of West Virginia Wesleyan College. Learn more at jessievaneerden.com.