Sara Johnson Allen, "Down Here We Come Up" (Black Lawrence Press, 2023)

In Sara Johnson Allen's novel Down Here We Come Up (Black Lawrence Press 2023), Kate Jessup’s mother lures her back home to North Carolina. Jackie Jessup is a con-artist, always working a scheme, always taking what she wanted, and she taught Kate to do the same. Now she’s dying, and Kate is estranged and living far away in Boston. Kate, her mother, and a third woman, Maribel, have either alienated, given away, or otherwise lost their children. It’s 2006, and Jackie has hatched a dubious plan for Kat to drive down to Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, pretend she’s the mother of Maribel’s children, and sneak them back over the border into the states. Kate needs to figure out what’s in it for her mother, because with Jackie Jessup, there’s always a price to pay. This is a novel about class, inheritance, and flawed people making mistakes, taking risks, or trying to survive.

Sara Johnson Allen was raised (mostly) in North Carolina. A recipient of the Marianne Russo Award for Emerging Writers by the Key West Literary Seminar, the Stockholm Writers Festival First Pages Prize, an artistic grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, and MacDowell fellowships, her work has appeared in PANK Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Reckon Review, among others. She is finishing a second novel and starting a work of creative nonfiction, which is an exploration of cultural and political history through personal narrative, centering on her 17th century home in coastal Massachusetts. When she is not teaching or shuttling her three kids around, she writes about place and how it shapes us.

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