Press Release: The Stuff That Never Happened by Maddie Dawson
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Anna Mintz
(212) 572-6186
Funny and sexy, tender and titillating, this big, brilliant debut novel is brimming with truths about marriage, family, and love, as a married woman compares the man she never forgot with the loyal husband by her side
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“Maybe this is common. Perhaps the whole human race goes around with an ache like this. Maybe we’re all dreaming of a person from the tantalizing past who sits there, uninvited, watching from the edge of our consciousness, somebody you find packing up and moving out of your head just as you’re waking up in the morning, and whose essence clings to you all day as though you have spent the night with him, wandering off together somewhere among the stars, making out on strangers’ couches and in train stations and football stadiums, laughing over things that make no sense at all.” – From The Stuff That Never Happened |
THE STUFF THAT NEVER HAPPENED
A Novel
By Maddie Dawson
Maddie Dawson was inspired to write THE STUFF THAT NEVER HAPPENED (August 3, 2010; Crown Publishers; $23.00) after running into an old flame 20 years after their painful breakup and being stunned to realize how little he now meant to her. But it got her thinking: what if they’d stayed together? What about her life would have been different? Would they have remained in love? After that, it seemed everywhere she looked, people were talking about their previous passionate love affairs and their mixed feelings about the “one who got away,” and she knew a novel was asking to be written. This is the story of a midlife modern marriage, with its ups and downs, its daily disappointments and overarching high points—and a woman suddenly waking up to ask the question: Is this the marriage that I really wanted? Told in alternating voices between the past and present, Maddie Dawson’s debut novel will tug at your heart strings from the very first pages until the final paragraph.
Annabelle McKay knows she shouldn’t have any complaints. She’s been in a stable marriage that’s lasted almost three decades and has provided her with two wonderful children, thousands of family dinners around a sturdy oak table, and a husband so devoted to his work that he feels the need to schedule lovemaking into his calendar every Wednesday morning. Other wives envy the fact that Grant is not the type of man who would ever cheat on her or leave her for a younger woman, but Annabelle isn’t so sure that’s enough. Alone once again now that the kids have gone, with Grant’s career ramping up while Annabelle’s life as Everybody’s Favorite Mom is crumbling, an ominous distance opens between them as they separately cope with the fallout from the secret they agreed never to speak of all these years: the fact that Annabelle had an affair at the beginning of their marriage with the one person who would hurt Grant the most.
But can the past just be dismissed so easily? And is it even possible to agree to such a secret pact? Annabelle doesn’t think so, and when she’s suddenly called to New York City to help care for her pregnant daughter Sophie, she finds herself taking a good, hard look at her life—and the glue that has held her marriage together. Back in the same city where she once felt so alive, and watching Sophie struggle with her own rocky marriage, Annabelle feels her world unraveling as she unexpectedly runs into her old lover and finds herself once again enthralled with the possibilities of great love.
Maddie Dawson has captured the heart, the heartache, and often the hilarity of being a woman with a deep and complicated internal life. Exposing the inner workings of relationships and love, and breathtakingly honest about both, THE STUFF THAT NEVER HAPPENED is an intricate, heartfelt examination of modern marriage that takes readers on a journey into the realm of life’s haunting what-ifs and the road not taken.
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About the Author:
MADDIE DAWSON lives in Connecticut and is grateful to be happily married.
THE STUFF THAT NEVER HAPPENED
A Novel
By Maddie Dawson
Crown Publishers
August 3, 2010 • $23.00
978-0-307-39367-8• Hardcover
