Tuesday Memes: The From-Aways

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where you can share the first paragraph, or a few, of a book you are reading or thinking about reading soon.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!

Today I am spotlighting The From-Aways by C J Hauser.

Fresh talent CJ Hauser makes her literary debut with The From-Aways, an irreverent story of family, love, friendship, and lobsters, in the tradition of J. Courtney Sullivan’s Maine and Richard Russo’s Empire Falls.

Two women come to Maine in search of family and find more love, heartbreak, and friendship than they’d ever imagined one little fishing town could hold.

When Leah, a young New York reporter, meets Henry, she falls in love with everything about him: his freckles, green thumb, and tales of a Maine childhood. They marry quickly and Leah convinces Henry to move back to Menamon. As Leah builds a life there, reporting for The Menamon Star and vowing to be less of an emotional screw-up, the newlyweds are shocked to discover that they don’t know each other nearly so well as they thought they did.

When Quinn’s mother dies, she tracks down the famous folk-singer father she’s never known, in Menamon. Scrappy and smart-mouthed, Quinn gets a job at the local paper, an apartment above the town diner, and tries to shore up the courage to meet her father. But falling in love with her roommate, Rosie, was never part of the plan.

These two unruly women’s work relationship at The Star deepens into best-friendship when they stumble onto a story that shakes sleepy Menamon—and holds damaging repercussions for Leah’s husband and Quinn’s roommate both. As the town descends into turmoil, both women must decide what kind of lives they are willing to fight for.

Opening Paragraph

    I have two lobsters in my bathtub and I’m not sure I can kill them.

    I’m sitting on the rim of the tub. It has curled, brass feet. Everything seems alive and haunted in this house; that’s my first problem.

    My second problem is that I pet the lobsters. I roll up a white-buttoned sleeve and run my pinched fingers along the length of Lobster Number One’s antenna. It feels sensitive and unbreakable like coiled wire. Lobster Number One knocks his crusher claw against my hand, but there’s a thick, pink rubber band binding it up, so I’m in no real danger. I stroke Lobster Number Two’s antenna as well, so they’re even.

My Teaser

    I bet you tell zero people zero things. And not telling people things is not a favor! If you try to not bother people by not telling them important things, all you do is put fluffy unknowable stuff between you, and that is sad and also dangerous.

page 101

(These quotes are from uncorrected advance proofs. Please refer to the final printed book for corrected quotes!)

So...what do you think? Is this one you would pick up? Leave a comment below!