Press Release: Ten Minutes from Home by Beth Greenfield
Contact: Samantha Choy
212-572-6027
~A 2010 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick~
TEN MINUTES FROM HOME
A Memoir
By Beth Greenfield
“I was deeply touched by Ten Minutes from Home. This is a book filled with heart. A courageous book. A necessary book . . . a testament to love, to family, and to survival.”
–Alison Smith, author of Name All the Animals
“Beth Greenfield’s devastating memoir chronicles a family reeling after the most awful and arbitrary of losses, the deaths of children. With acute, loving attention, Greenfield shows us how the living, transformed by grief, stagger back toward a renewed life.”
—Mark Doty, author of Dog Years
“This memoir of a family shattered by loss is also a story of resilience and the power of language, as the narrator ventures out into the world and returns to her family, with healing words.”
—Elizabeth Graver, author of The Honey Thief
Twelve-year-old Beth Greenfield was in her family’s station wagon, heading home from her ballet recital, when a drunk driver’s car spun out of control and slammed into the their car. Beth and her parents survived, but her younger brother, Adam, and her best friend, Kristin, were killed.
Twenty-five years after the tragedy, Beth, who is now a staff editor at Time Out New York, is still coming to terms with the loss that devastated her family. TEN MINUTES FROM HOME: A Memoir (Harmony Books; April 27, 2010; $24.00 hardcover) is an exquisitely told story of a family’s love, a survivor’s guilt, growing up, and learning to heal.
Right after the accident, Beth bought a package of composition paper and spent weeks hunched over her desk at home, writing a blow-by-blow account of what had happened in detailed prose and loopy blue cursive. More than two decades later, “My Book” became the source for Beth’s adult understanding of the life-changing events.
Tracing her life, which up until the accident had been a suburban bliss of beach clubs and dance classes, through the harrowing aftermath of the tragedy, TEN MINUTES FROM HOME captures the burden of grief, the loss of self, and the task of healing. The author shares vivid memories—how Kristin’s younger sister blamed Beth because it was Beth’s recital they were driving from; how Beth’s mother broke down in tears in the grocery store after spotting the Fruit Roll-Ups Adam liked to eat; how Beth’s father daily feared that the birth mother of Adam, who was adopted, would come knocking on the Greenfields’ door, asking to see her son.
As the benign concerns of adolescence are replaced by crushing guilt and grief, Beth searches for solace in surprising places (a kindly rabbi, the bottom of a keg, junior high choir, General Hospital), eventually discovering that while life is fragile, love doesn’t have to be. TEN MINUTES FROM HOME is Beth’s brave and honest journey toward a deeper understanding and love for her family and herself.
TEN MINUTES FROM HOME is an extraordinary debut work from a new voice, one that is brimming with honesty and bittersweet, beautiful truths about love and loss, strength and survival.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Beth Greenfield has written about travel, entertainment, gay culture, and parenting for publications including the New York Times, Lonely Planet, Out, Time Out New York Kids, and Time Out New York, where she is currently a staff editor. She lives in New York City and Provincetown.
TEN MINUTES FROM HOME
A Memoir
By Beth Greenfield
Harmony Books
On Sale: April 27, 2010
Price: $24.00 hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-307-46205-3
Visit www.bethgreenfield.com
