Synopsis:
Musical Chairs is candid, darkly humorous and wholly engaging. Taking place in Ohio, this gripping memoir recounts the story of a runaway girl and the family that stood by her.
After being struck by a severe panic disorder in 2003, Jen begins to explore her past. In doing so, she becomes enamored by the mysterious nature of her family's history. She discovers a pattern of mental health diagnoses and searches to define the cusp between her '90s working-class childhood and the trouble of adapting to a comfortable life in the suburbs.
Inspired by the least likely source, the family she left behind, Jen attempts to reconcile with this past. She reflects upon years of strip-dancing, alcoholism, and estrangement while maintaining impressive narrative control. This story is about identity, class, family ties, and the elusive nature of mental illness.
REVIEWS
Jen Knox is an exceptionally gifted storyteller, who can take the events of the past and craft them invariably into engaging and compelling narratives.
--Phillip Lopate, Author of Notes on Sontag
In Musical Chairs, expert storyteller Jen Knox has transformed her misspent youth into a seriously entertaining coming-of-age tale. Her rich reflections make sense of a complex past and her darkly humorous voice rings with truth. The art of memoir prospers in Jen Knox’s writing.
--Michelle Mercer, NPR contributor and author of Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter and Will You Take Me As I Am: Joni Mitchell's Blue Period
This true tale of grit, survival and eventual rebirth of the psyche is engaging and inspirational, even to a small-town girl like me.
--Gretchen A. Phillips, Pearson Education
With her unique voice, Jen tells the poignant, yet raw, story of her journey to adulthood, living on the streets as a runaway and her ultimate struggle to establish her own identity as a woman who truly values herself. This is one of those books that lingers long after the last page.
--Heather McIntosh, author of Small Animals First
Jen’s a runner, a runaway. Following in the footsteps of her great grandmother, Glory, who defiantly set out on her own near the same young age, and finding commonalities of mental illnesses among the women in her family, Jen must’ve realized her course was set out for her organically.
In the writing of Musical Chairs, a memoir blatant and unapologetic, Jen attempts to make sense of herself within the larger family history. Yet, for all of the similarities Jen discovered between herself and Glory, there is at least one difference: Glory ran away from family, while Jen’s running brought the both of them back.
--Jennifer Lynne Roberts, playwright and writer, author of Beekeeper and Book of Taos
Jen Knox is a fiction editor at Our Stories Literary Journal and writing tutor at San Antonio College. She attends The Writing Workshops at Bennington College (graduation date: January 2010). Jen’s writing has won the John Kessler Memorial Endowment for the Arts Award, and has been published in The Current, Flashquake, Kate, SLAB, Spring Street, Slow Trains, and Quiz & Quill, and she received honorable mention in the 2008 Glimmer Train “Family Matters Competition”
For information on bulk orders or author events:
Contact Publisher at: www.allthingsthatmatterpress.com
Contact Author at: Website: http://www.jenknox.com
Email: JenKnox395@gmail.com. Phone: 614-309-1795
