"This novel is charming, compelling, and wholly absorbing. The writing is precise, unadorned, and, at times, quietly lyrical. At its heart, this is a story about community, identity, and love. While the novel certainly tackles a subject—gender identity—that has been rightfully getting a lot of traction lately in various media, what draws me into this story is the way Maher writes of friendship and love and daily life in this small town in Indiana, Heaven. The tenderness with which Maher renders these characters and this community is compelling and heartrending."
Ann Tracy
Maher has that gift, coveted among writers, of entering fully whatever psyche she touches. At once amusing, sensitive, and articulate, she carries us to surprising places—in this case into the heart of a cross-dressing dentist whose humanity we at once recognize as our own.
Julie Weston
The luminous story of Charlie/Charlene delves into what it means to be a man or a woman—it wraps the reader up in the warm, loving, gossipy, and sometimes uncomfortable world of women in a small town beauty salon. Jan Maher captures the essence of complex, memorable characters and reflects both ordinary and extraordinary lives in mid-20th century America.
Chad Simpson
This novel is charming, compelling, and wholly absorbing. The writing is precise, unadorned, and, at times, quietly lyrical. At its heart, this is a story about community, identity, and love. While the novel certainly tackles a subject—gender identity—that has been rightfully getting a lot of traction lately in various media, what draws me into this story is the way Maher writes of friendship and love and daily life in this small town in Indiana, Heaven. The tenderness with which Maher renders these characters and this community is compelling and heartrending.
Chad Simpson]]>
This novel is charming, compelling, and wholly absorbing. The writing is precise, unadorned, and, at times, quietly lyrical. At its heart, this is a story about community, identity, and love. While the novel certainly tackles a subject—gender identity—that has been rightfully getting a lot of traction lately in various media, what draws me into this story is the way Maher writes of friendship and love and daily life in this small town in Indiana, Heaven. The tenderness with which Maher renders these characters and this community is compelling and heartrending.
Ann Tracy]]>
Maher has that gift, coveted among writers, of entering fully whatever psyche she touches. At once amusing, sensitive, and articulate, she carries us to surprising places—in this case into the heart of a cross-dressing dentist whose humanity we at once recognize as our own.
Lex Williford
This novel is a strikingly original addition to the rich, burgeoning field of gender studies and is written in a deceptively simple style, never melodramatic but understated, even humble, a plain song as readable and vast as wheat fields grown to the horizon along the great American plains.
Lex Williford]]>
This novel is a strikingly original addition to the rich, burgeoning field of gender studies and is written in a deceptively simple style, never melodramatic but understated, even humble, a plain song as readable and vast as wheat fields grown to the horizon along the great American plains.
2014 Pushcart Prize Winner for Nonfiction - Steve Adams
In Earth as It Is, Jan Maher deftly and delicately threads her narrative, the story of a heterosexual cross-dresser seeking a home, through 30 years of American culture. Her novel is deceptively powerful, smooth like the surface of a river that belies the pull beneath it. You slip in, and before you know it you've travelled quite a distance and have no interest in leaving. A very rewarding and, at turns, surprising work.
Director, The Center for LGBT Education, Outreach & Services, Ithaca College - Luca Maurer
Gender diversity is, and has always been, all around - in our families, hometowns, places of worship, workplaces, and communities. Maher's Earth As It Is takes place in a time in which individual, family, and societal possibilities and expectations collide and combine in unexpected ways while friendship, loyalty, and love prevail.
co-founder of Mid-Hudson Transgender Association - Jan Brown
This book is an excellent read—the story is so very sweet and poignant. Maher has done a wonderful job showing the nature of true love.
Julie Weston]]>
The luminous story of Charlie/Charlene delves into what it means to be a man or a woman—it wraps the reader up in the warm, loving, gossipy, and sometimes uncomfortable world of women in a small town beauty salon. Jan Maher captures the essence of complex, memorable characters and reflects both ordinary and extraordinary lives in mid-20th century America.
editor of 'Women in the Trees' and 'Between Mothers and Daughters' - Susan Koppelman
Charlie Bader's love of softness and delicacy should be irrelevant to how he is perceived but that's not the way things are, so Charlie's got a problem. How he resolves it brings him face to face with major ethical questions we all encounter. When and to whom do we reveal truths about our intimate reality? Why and for whose sake do we keep secrets? And how much comfort and strength do we gain when we discover we are not alone? Visit Heaven, Indiana in Jan Maher's ground-breaking novel and explore these essential questions about identity, authenticity, compromise, and love.
