The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious - Paperback

by Lori Jakiela (Author)

Her 70-year-old, cancer-stricken mother kills snakes with a broom. Her best friend believes in psychics and the Virgin Mary. Her new neighbor steals her CDs and her aunt sneaks cheese curls into the house. After seven years in New York, Lori Jakiela gives up her job as an international flight attendant and her dreams of becoming a writer, and returns home to Pittsburgh to take care of her dying mother. A loving but befuddled daughter, Jakiela stumbles to find her new life while sleeping in her childhood bed and teaching writing to students who hate to read. Unexpected love, expected loss, the struggle to find our own families, THE BRIDGE TO TAKE WHEN THINGS GET SERIOUS is the story of mothers and daughters, the debts we pay, and the new lives we build for ourselves when we least expect them.

Author Biography

Lori Jakiela is the author of the memoir, Miss New York Has Everything (Warner/Hatchette, 2006), and a poetry collection - Spot the Terrorist!(Turning Point, 2012). Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and more. She is a recipient of the City of Asylum-Pittsburgh Prize, a Golden Quill Award from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize many times. She teaches in the writing programs at The University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg and Chatham University, and lives outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, the writer Dave Newman, and their children. Her third memoir - Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe - will be published by Atticus Books in Summer 2015. For more, visit http: //lorijakiela.net