{"title":"Sally Bellerose","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"girls-club-book-sally-bellerose-9781932859782","title":"The Girls Club","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Girls Club\u003c\/i\u003e is the coming-of-age story of a young, white, working-class woman. Set in the 1970s, the story revolves around Cora Rose as she copes with her emerging sexuality, an illness her sisters refer to as the dreaded bowel disease, and the conflicts created by the growing disparity between her desires and her Catholic upbringing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePart one deals with the three sisters' adolescent relationship to each other and their Catholic working-class world. Cora Rose's distress at being caught in an embrace with her best friend Stella leads her to sleep with the first boy who shows interest. She is married with a child at age eighteen.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePart two shows how the sisters help and hinder each other in their struggles to take control and responsibility over their lives.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePart three reveals Cora Rose's physical challenges, including an ostomy, that further complicate her feelings about her sexuality and increase her need for her sisters' support. She becomes involved with a woman she meets at a bar called The Girls Club. Marie and Renee play out their own struggles as Cora Rose leaves her husband, fights to keep her child, and overcomes religious and social prejudices that threaten her personal integrity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eSally Bellerose\u003c\/b\u003e was awarded a Fellowship in Literature from the National Endowment for the Arts based on an excerpt from this book. The manuscript was a finalist for the James Jones Fellowship, the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, and the Bellwether Endowment. Sally Bellerose lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.\u003c\/p\u003e.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49560598315281,"sku":"GOR005400327","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":49763664036113,"sku":"CIN1932859780A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50394893058321,"sku":"CIN1932859780G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51053271187729,"sku":"NIN9781932859782","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1932859780.jpg?v=1750771248"},{"product_id":"fishwives-book-sally-bellerose-9781612941899","title":"Fishwives","description":"\u003cp\u003eCombining the pathos and social significance of \u003ci\u003eFried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-stop Caf \u003c\/i\u003e and the humor of \u003ci\u003eThe Golden Girls\u003c\/i\u003e with a cast of diverse characters worthy of the musical \u003ci\u003eRent\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eFishwives\u003c\/i\u003e chronicles a lifetime through the eyes of two old women behaving badly.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOn a cold winter day when eighty-nine-year old Regina and ninety-year-old Jackie--who met in 1955, an era when women were rounded up and jailed simply for dancing together or dressing like a man--manage to get themselves out of the house. With the help of TJ and Ramon, two young men from their working-class neighborhood in Western Massachusetts, they tie their long-dead Christmas tree to the top of their car and, using a screwdriver in place of a broken gearshift, slowly make the drive to the dump.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is also the day when everything changes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the course of the day, memories are triggered, and their history as a passionate, devoted, but troubled couple at the intersection of historic cultural and political change unfolds via scenes from the past: their first meeting during a police raid on the bar; Regina's epiphany that she could truly love a woman; Jackie's persistent infidelity and gambling; a nomadic life often lived apart in the early years as they run away from landlords who discover their secret, toward jobs and a sustainable life, sometimes away from, but always back to each other; the Kennedy assassination, a backdrop to one reconciliation; Jackie's efforts to convince Regina to marry, Regina's saying yes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFew elderly characters (and even fewer queers) depicted in fiction are seen in their full humanity. Rarer still are depictions of old people in the fullness of their sexuality. \u003ci\u003eFishwives\u003c\/i\u003e pulls back a long-closed curtain, revealing these aging women as sensual, loving, and flawed beings struggling with the harsh realities of life, including poverty, which Jackie calls that fishwife who gets louder and meaner in old age.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTwo stories adapted from \u003ci\u003eFishwives\u003c\/i\u003e have won First Prize for Fiction at the Tennessee Williams Saints and Sinners Festival and along with a third excerpt have been published in anthologies connected with the festival. Adapted stories were also published in \u003ci\u003eBloom\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eDappled Things\u003c\/i\u003e, a Catholic literary magazine. Dorothy Allison selected a short story Sunflowers, adapted from \u003ci\u003eFishwives\u003c\/i\u003e, for inclusion in \u003ci\u003eWalking the Edge: A Southern Gothic Anthology\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50913522516241,"sku":"CIN1612941893VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51039536775441,"sku":"NIN9781612941899","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1612941893.jpg?v=1750992395"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-sally-bellerose.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}