Blood Sisters: A Novel

by Valerie Miner

Overview

Blood Sisters is a gripping story created with themes of real substance and wide appeal. While this sizzling novel is considered a classic of 1970s feminist literary fiction, the story is all too timely today as we face violent debate about national and ethnic autonomy in Ireland and elsewhere. Journalists witness ground wars and terrorist responses in detailed news reports, but Valerie Miner has divined a passionate full-blooded story about the individuals and families behind those headlines. At the heart of Blood Sisters are two cousins, one Irish, one American, who grew up steeped in their mothers’ ideals of the 1916 Uprising. The two young women try to understand each other’s views, to cross the blurry lines between private and political life, but are divided by their separate histories and often despair at the possibility of comprehension, let alone reconciliation. Blood Sisters intricately combines important issues within the tense format of a thriller. Miner subtly explores the relationships among women of different generations, unexpected and unacceptable romance, the daily dramas of immigrant life, and the struggle of Irish people to discover and create their own identity and autonomy. Blood Sisters with its suspenseful story, its crucial questions, its vibrant humor and its evocative descriptions is a tour de force by one of the most important writers of her generation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780870136658
Publisher:	Michigan State University Press
Publication date:	03/31/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	206
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Valerie Miner is the award-winning author of thirteen books, including Abundant Light, Range of Light, A Walking Fire, Winter's Edge, and Blood Sisters. She has been published in The Village Voice, The Nation, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Salmagundi, and many other journals. Her stories and essays have appeared in more than fifty anthologies. She has won the 2005 McKnight Artist Fellowship; Valerie was a 2000 Fulbright Senior Scholar to India. She has won fellowships and awards from The Rockefeller Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, The NEA, The Jerome Foundation, The Heinz Foundation, The Australia Council Literary Arts Board and numerous other sources. She has had Fulbright Fellowships to Tunisia, India and Indonesia. Miner is Professor Emerita, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and is now an artist-in-residence and professor at Stanford University. She travels internationally giving readings, lectures and workshops. She lives in San Francisco and Mendocino County, California.