Everybody Here Is Kin
A novel by BettyJoyce Nash
ISBN: 9781956440355 paperback $22.95
ISBN: 9781956440362 ebook $9.99
September 2023
On Boneyard Island, Georgia, where everyone’s weirdly kin, 13-year-old Lucille is marooned when her mother goes AWOL with an old flame, leaving Lucille with only her father’s ashes, two half-siblings, and Will, the misanthropic manager of the island’s only motel. The abandonment kills hope of Lucille’s promised snorkeling trip to the Florida Reef before ocean heat kills the coral and illusions she’s harbored about her mother’s sanity. Everybody Here Is Kin explores the lives of this sinking family, the island community, and fears of exposing wounds, old and new, when natural disaster forces them to trust, and depend on, strangers.
Praise for Everybody Here Is Kin, the new novel by BettyJoyce Nash:
In her beautiful Everybody Here Is Kin, BettyJoyce Nash has laid bare the ways our blood betrays and restores us. The book is a powerful exploration of love’s shadowy forms and the ways our relationships are as shaped by desire as they are by the places we’ve called home, the places we keep running from and toward.—Bret Anthony Johnston, author of Remember Me Like This, and Corpus Christi: Stories, and editor of Naming the World and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer
In Everybody Here Is Kin, BettyJoyce Nash tells a coming-of-age tale that challenges notions of motherhood, both familial and as guardians of the Earth. Lucille is a girl on the brink of adolescence whose intelligence is matched only by her intuitive knowledge of the natural world—where she’s been left to monitor her two younger stepsiblings. This story transcends time and place and will be a joy for anyone who loves this transient world.—Gale Massey, author of The Girl from Blind River, Rising and Other Stories
This novel makes your heart swell, waterlogged with love and admiration. BettyJoyce Nash’s heroine, 13-year-old Lucille, worries about the planet sinking into the ocean, even as everyone in her life is going under, including the cranky motel manager, Will. Whom can she save and whom can she trust? Living inside Lucille’s head is a rare treat in BettyJoyce Nash’s astute, funny, and poignant book.—Mary Kay Zuravleff, author of Man Alive! a Washington Post Notable Book, The Bowl Is Already Broken, and The Frequency of Souls.
BettyJoyce Nash’s writing has appeared in journals including North Dakota Quarterly and Across the Margin, as well as in newspapers, magazines, and online; her fiction has been recognized with fellowships from MacDowell (2013), The Ragdale Foundation (2015), and VCCA (2018). In 2014, she was selected as the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts fiction fellow to the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Ireland. She’s taught writing at the University of Richmond, the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail, and several community writing centers; she now teaches at WriterHouse, a nonprofit literary arts center in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Reviews, Interviews, and Articles:
kpdavis –
When your mama is a you-know-what! Not the author’s words, but my heart broke for this young lady having to deal with a lot of hard stuff, grown-up stuff, while her mother is chasing a man instead of looking after her kids. You know how they say “it takes a village” to raise a child? Well this book has a rich warm village for the protagonist of this story, and they are led by an hornery veteran with a good heart.