Category: Excerpts
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Momma and Eddie said goodbye to Magnolia and me in the driveway at the home of the Beasleys. I’m going to call them the Beasleys, like my daddy did, because they didn’t really seem like regular grandparents to me.
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My name is Magnolia Shakes, and I was born on July 28, 1970. Exactly eight years later my daddy died in an act of self-killing out on the interstate near where we lived.
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+ Accident, Dallas, Dolls, Fiction, Happy Birthday, Interstate, Novel Excerpt, The Shakes, Wizard of Oz+
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One day Eddie and my mom sat me and my sister down in the living room after supper to tell us something important. Eddie said he had gotten a promotion and that he was being sent to work in Chicago. I didn’t know why the hell anyone would want to…
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+ Chicago, Fiction, Grandparenting, Kiss, Novel Excerpt, Oshkosh, Summer of 1979, Winnie-The-Pooh, Wisconsin+
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Nobody really knows why my daddy did what he did. Some say it was a sickness of the heart. Others say it was a sickness of the mind. I think it was probably both. I was just a kid when it happened, so it probably didn’t matter what I thought,…
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