Kiss the Morning Star by Elissa Janine Hoole
Releases: April 1st, 2012
The summer after high-school
graduation, a year after her mother’s tragic death, Anna has no plans – beyond
her need to put a lot of miles between herself and the past. With forever
friend Kat, a battered copy of Kerouac’s DHARMA BUMS, and a car with a dodgy
oil filter, the girls set out on an epic road trip across the USA. Maybe
somewhere along the way they’ll prove or disprove the existence of God. Maybe they’ll
even get laid . . .
It’s a journey both outward and inward.
Through the Badlands and encounters with predatory men and buffalo. A crazy bus
ride to Mexico with a bunch of hymn-singing missionaries. Facing death, naked
in the forest with an enraged grizzly bear . . . Gradually, Anna realizes that
this is a voyage of discovery into her own self, her own silent pain – and into
the tangled history that she and Kat share. What is love? What is sexual
identity? And how do you find a way forward into a
new future – a way to declare openly and without fear all that lies within you?
new future – a way to declare openly and without fear all that lies within you?
Author
Bio: Elissa Janine Hoole has a longstanding
love of road trips and beat writers, but it was a summer-long ramble out West
that inspired this debut novel, when she and her husband set off across the
country with a backpack full of Kerouac books.
Now settled in her home in northern Minnesota, Elissa teaches middle school
English and writes until midnight, sipping cold coffee and ignoring the
laundry.
She still suffers from acute wanderlust
from time to time, but road trips now involve a mini-van and a chorus of “Are
we there yet?” from two small dharma bums-in-training.
Rules
of the Road Trip:
In Kiss
the Morning Star, each chapter begins with an excerpt from Anna’s road trip
journal. Like Anna, I have kept journals
of many of my road trips—including, as Anna does, descriptions of the things I
see, scraps of poetry, lists, and even a “roadkill count,” the gory (and goofy)
tradition my husband and I started on our first road trip to visit my dad in
Topeka, Kansas, way back in 1996. I
decided to spend some time today searching through a bunch of my own road trip
journals to give you my Rules of the Road Trip.
First, from my very first road trip
without my parents, a bus trip at age sixteen to Washington D.C. with my school
orchestra—a big deal because I got to travel with my best friend, I learned
this important lesson about road tripping:
Choose
a good seat.
The back of the bus is where the cool kids sit, but when the smell of
the bus bathroom combines with the smell of the sweaty, unshowered kids in
front of you and the smell of the French onion Sunchips that are the only thing
the two of you eat for three days because you’re trying to save all your food
money for buying cool things in the city, the result is a rather nauseating
aroma that, coupled with the swaying motion of a bus moving for more than
thirty hours in a row, is likely to lead to the discovery that puking in a
moving vehicle is disgusting and disastrous.
Next, from another bus trip—this one to
Mexico the week after Christmas, with another one of my best friends. The bus in this trip actually made it into my
novel, although the Pastor and the congregation we went with in real life were
amazing and beautiful and nothing at all like Pastor Shepherd in Kiss the Morning Star, I’ve got this
tip:
Choose
a good attitude. There
are a million and one things that can go wrong on a road trip, from a bus that
stalls out on a railroad track to the brakes that start to shake and shudder
while you’re heading down a steep mountain (and the long grass around the tires
while you’re trying to fix them, with the signs all around warning of poisonous
snakes lurking in the foliage…) In my
journal from the Mexico trip, I found this quote: “We’re staying at a compound in Waco,
Texas. ‘The other compound,’ says the man in charge, referencing the infamous
Waco Massacre. I’m trying to keep it all
together, but they can’t find my suitcase under the bus, and I had to use
somebody’s old tablecloth as a bath towel.
There was a creepy stain on it.
I’m pretending it’s cranberries.”
My last Rule of the Road Trip is the
most important one of all.
Choose
a good traveling companion. My
favorite road trip buddy is someone who can handle my perfect silence for miles
and miles without once asking me if I’m mad at him. He’s someone who laughs at all the ridiculous
things I say but never laughs when I sing at the top of my lungs to every song
on the radio. He drives the back roads
and isn’t afraid of stopping to explore or to take a detour, even if it’s not on
the day’s itinerary. My perfect road trip
companion scoffs at the idea of an itinerary.
My traveling pal needs to drive a lot so I can daydream and write poetry
with my feet up on the dash—he should be prepared to listen to me read aloud a
lot. He’ll stop the car at the
Continental Divide and make a snow angel with me in July. My perfect road trip companion is someone who
understands when the wanderlust hits me, who knows that the answer is to simply
drive into the distance, all night, fueled by coffee and starlight and the open
road, gleaming in our headlights.
Happy Road Tripping!
J elissa
Question time:
If
you could road trip with any 3 people (alive or dead) who would you choose and
why?
My answer to that question would be the sweetest
and most boring answer ever--although road tripping with Jack Kerouac would be
an adventure I wouldn't pass up in a heartbeat, I adore road tripping with my
favorite rambling companions: my husband and two sons, true dharma bums all
three. In my imaginary dream world, I am
able to take a sabbatical from real life and travel with them for months and
months, soaking up the experiences of the world and stopping at all the
roadside attractions.
RW: Sounds like 3 important rules to stick by, I'll keep them in mind! I love the photos, especially, the one taken of Elissa on a road trip bus in highschool! Red hair (captivating) + The Doors t-shirt (before my time, but I've heard of them) + wide grin = great photo! :DAnd now onto the giveaway!!!
- Giveaway ends February 20, 2012.
- International
- Winners will be contacted via email. If you do not respond within 48 hours, a new winner will be chosen.
- By entering this giveaway, you are agreeing to
the terms listed above.
- I do not take any responsibility for items
lost in the mail
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