A Certain Slant: The Maggie Barnes Trilogy

by Mary VanderGoot

Overview

Maggie Barnes has left her journals to her son, Rowland, but he is puzzled by gaps in her accounts, and he turns to his mother's dear friend, Alethea, for help. Rowland reviews memories he shaped as a naive boy, and in the process is forced to admit that he was clueless about much of what was happening around him. Alethea tries to answer Rowland's questions about his mother, but as she does she realizes that she cannot tell Maggie's story without telling her own. The hidden stories Rowland and Alethea resurrect and share with each other change them, and their hearts are opened to a connection that bridges the generations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781725289468
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	06/18/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	266
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Mary VanderGoot is a psychologist, marriage and family therapist, and addictions counselor. She has been a professor of psychology, a prison educator, and a caseworker for International Red Cross Services for tracing missing persons. She is the author of After Freedom: How Boomers Pursued Freedom, Questioned Virtue, and Still Search for Meaning (2012) and Broken Glass (2019), the first novel in the Maggie Barnes Trilogy.

Mary VanderGoot is a Licensed Psychologist, Marriage and Family Therapist, and Addictions Counselor. She is a graduate of Princeton University where she earned a PhD in psychology. In addition to her work as a therapist, Dr. VanderGoot has been a university professor and author of numerous books and articles including: A Life Planning Guide for Women, Narrating Psychology, and Healthy Emotions.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Mary VanderGoot’s kind wisdom guides us through the complicated ways we humans try to find comfort and communion in a sometimes thoughtless world. A Certain Slant gently but incisively uncovers and examines the little crimes of the heart that wound us so in this beautifully drawn world rich with family, friends, secrets, and longing.”

—Patricia Rozema, director and writer for film and television, including Mansfield Park and Mozart in the Jungle



“Author Dr. Mary VanderGoot’s emotional smarts serve readers well in this poignant story of an adult son reentering the gritty reality of family—the often avoided and neglected complexity—to see his mother whole. This novelist’s psychological acuity is spot on and illuminating.”

—Cynthia Beach, author of The Surface of Water and Creative Juices



“Mary VanderGoot brings an expansive understanding of human psychology to her characters in A Certain Slant, the second volume of the Maggie Barnes Trilogy, revealing how comfort and conflict both reside in the quotidian, and reminding us that we heal through memory. VanderGoot is, as well, an adept reader of Proust. While memory tethers her characters to their past, the act of remembering at ‘a certain slant’ liberates, gives them entry to a different world of possibilities.”

—Elizabeth Huergo, author of The Death of Fidel Pérez

Editorial Reviews

Mary VanderGoot’s kind wisdom guides us through the complicated ways we humans try to find comfort and communion in a sometimes thoughtless world. A Certain Slant gently but incisively uncovers and examines the little crimes of the heart that wound us so in this beautifully drawn world rich with family, friends, secrets, and longing.”

—Patricia Rozema, director and writer for film and television, including Mansfield Park and Mozart in the Jungle



“Author Dr. Mary VanderGoot’s emotional smarts serve readers well in this poignant story of an adult son reentering the gritty reality of family—the often avoided and neglected complexity—to see his mother whole. This novelist’s psychological acuity is spot on and illuminating.”

—Cynthia Beach, author of The Surface of Water and Creative Juices



“Mary VanderGoot brings an expansive understanding of human psychology to her characters in A Certain Slant, the second volume of the Maggie Barnes Trilogy, revealing how comfort and conflict both reside in the quotidian, and reminding us that we heal through memory. VanderGoot is, as well, an adept reader of Proust. While memory tethers her characters to their past, the act of remembering at ‘a certain slant’ liberates, gives them entry to a different world of possibilities.”

—Elizabeth Huergo, author of The Death of Fidel Pérez

From the Publisher