Failing the Trapeze

Overview

Fifteen-year-old Theresa Williams has just settled under the oak tree in her front yard to read a book when she notices the boot dangling at eye-level. She knows immediately who the dead man is, hanging in the heavy foliage of the family oak tree. That is, she knows Lawrence’s name, his deep unhappiness, and how he came to live with her and her mother Maxine, a woman who rages at him constantly, inexplicably. But Theresa will learn the truth about Lawrence, when the turmoil that surrounds the mother and daughter explodes.

Author Biography

Susan V. Meyers received her Ph.D. in Rhetoric, Composition and the Teaching of English from the University of Arizona and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota. She currently teaches creative writing at Seattle University. Meyers has published in Calyx, Dogwood, Oregon Humanities Journal, Wilderness House Literary Review, Rosebud Literary Magazine, The Minnesota Review, among others, and she is the recipient of a Fulbright award. She is currently working on another historical novel about her family s circus, which operated during the early part of the twentieth century, as well as an ethnographic monograph about literacy and migration in the U.S./Mexico context.