Information about Stephanie Kallos and "Sing Them Home"
Stephanie Kallos was born in Mountainhome, Idaho and grew up in Wymore and Lincoln, Nebraska.
As a youth, she trained as a classical pianist. She sang and played in bars during her college years. She received her MFA in acting from the University of Washington and spent 20 years in the theater as an actress and teacher of voice, speech and dialects. In 1990, she moved to Seattle with her actor husband Bill. She left acting after the birth of her first son. The Kallos’ sons are now 16 and 14.
Stephanie modestly describes herself as a “closet writer,” but critics have compared her work to Margaret Atwood, John Irving, Carol Shields and Anne Tyler. Kallos’ short fiction has received a Raymond Carter Award and a Pushcart Prize nomination. Her first novel, Broken for You, which was translated into 10 languages, was published in 2004. It was chosen by Sue Monk Kidd as a “Today Show” book club selection and received the Washington State and PNBA (Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association) book awards. Her second novel, Sing Them Home, was published in 2009; a Pacific NW Independent Booksellers best seller, it was selected as a January 2009 Indie Next Title.
Stephanie lives with her family in a north Seattle neighborhood. She currently conducts an 88-voice intergenerational choir of Unitarians. She is working on her third novel which will explore relationships between the dead and the living more directly, through an examination of the American Spiritualist movement and some of its key historical figures.
"Stephanie Kallos." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 July 2010.
http://www.kdl.org/kdl/pdf/BookClubBag/BrokenForYou.pdf
Midwest Booksellers Q & A with Stephanie Kallos
http://www.midwestbooksellers.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/sing-them-home-authorqa.pdf
You Tube Authormagazine interview with Stephanie Kallos by William Kenower
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmhvcdQtxLE
An interview with Stephanie Kallos by Vy Amour of BookBrowse
http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm?author_number=1061
Stephanie Kallos’ website
http://www.stephaniekallos.com/
About "Sing them Home"
According to the Web site Book Browse:
"With her best-selling debut novel, Broken for You,
Stephanie Kallos earned comparisons to John Irving, Anne Tyler,
Margaret Atwood, and Carol Shields, establishing her as a writer of
uncommon “wisdom and soulfulness” (Sue Monk Kidd).
"Sing Them Home is a deeply moving portrait of three grown siblings who have lived in the shadow of unresolved grief since their mother’s mysterious disappearance when they were children. Everyone in Emlyn Springs, Nebraska, knows the story of Hope Jones, the physician’s wife whose big dreams for their tiny town were lost along with her in the tornado of 1978. For Hope’s three young children, the stability of life with their distant, preoccupied father, and with Viney, their mother’s spitfire best friend, is no match for their mother’s absence. Larken, the eldest, is an art history professor who seeks in food an answer to a less tangible hunger; Gaelan, the only son, is a telegenic weatherman who devotes his life to predicting the unpredictable and whose profession, and all too much more, depend on his sculpted frame and ready smile; and Bonnie, the baby of the family is a self-proclaimed archivist who combs the roadsides for clues to her mother’s legacy, and permission to move on.
"When, decades after their mother’s disappearance, they are summoned
home after their father’s sudden death, they are forced to revisit the
childhood tragedy at the center of their lives. With breathtaking
lyricism, wisdom, and humor, Stephanie Kallos explores the consequences
of protecting the ones we love.
"Sing Them Home is a magnificent tapestry of lives connected and undone by tragedy, lives poised—unbeknownst to the characters themselves—for redemption."
