Susan Shreve

Susan Richards Shreve (M.A., University of Virginia, 1969) is the author of thirteen novels, most recently, A Student of Living Things, and a memoir, Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood in FDR's Polio Haven published in 2007. She is the editor or coeditor of five anthologies, including Skin Deep with Marita Golden, Tales Out of School with Porter Shreve and Dream Me Home Safely.  She has written twenty nine books for children.

Susan has been a Guggenheim Fellow, an NEA fellow, and a Jenny McKean Moore Fellow. She has served as president of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation.

"...What is striking about the George Mason MFA student is the variety of backgrounds, education and range of experience and story that each brings to the program. There's a democratic generosity of spirit that defines us."

The Freedom of Anonymity: Recent article from the New York Times "Writers on Writing" series (PDF format; reprinted with permission from the New York Times)

Novels

Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood in FDR's Polio Haven, 2007

A Student of Living Things, Viking Adult, 2006

Plum and Jaggers, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., 2000

Glimmer, 1997

The Visiting Physician, Doubleday, 1996 see more >>>
From the jacket copy:

Meridian, Ohio, seems like a nostalgic reverie of the American heartland, a place where community spirit and old-fashioned values have not been lost. Certainly that is the image promoted by a big-network television documentary--an image that the townspeople protect at the price of splitting Meridian apart. Helen Fielding, a young pediatrics resident, arrives as a "visiting physician" to treat a bacterial outbreak that threatens Meridian's children. She is presumed a stranger in a town poisoned by an undercurrent of hostility and resentment in the wake of the documentary. But Helen is no stranger to Meridian. Her family vacationed there when she was a child, until the central shattering event of their lives--the disappearance of Helen's little sister. As Helen discovers the betrayals at the center of Meridian's disintegration, she also learns the terrible secret in her own family, bringing hope of redemption to the town and, for Helen, the possibility of genuine love. <<< close excerpt

The Train Home, Doubleday, 1993

Daughters of the New World, Nan Talese/Doubleday, 1992 see more >>>
From the jacket copy:

In this striking new novel, Susan Richards Shreve gives us a breathtaking portrait of America since 1900, as witnessed by four generations of strong, passionate women.

It is Amanda, born New Year's Day, 1900, whose story is the center of the book. Strong-minded and courageous, she runs off to France to photograph World War I and later travels the United States, capturing the pathos of the lives of women and the poor. Her work defines her character as well as that of the swift-moving twentieth century, in which lives are recalled as a series of brief intense moments strung together like a picture album.

Daughters of the New World is a spellbinding chronicle of extraordinary, incident-rich lives, a multigenerational novel with a contemporary sense of time. Susan Richards Shreve has created unforgettable characters who enhance our admiration of American women--their great strength, their capacity for love, and their courage to invent their own lives. <<< close excerpt

A Country of Strangers, Simon and Schuster, 1989 see more >>>

From the jacket copy:

The year is 1942, the setting is Virginia farm country. A new owner is about to move into Elm Grove Farm. Young, idealistic Charley Fletcher has brought his family from the Midwest to live in what he imagines will be utopia, while he does his part for the wartime government in Washington. At first glance the Fletchers appear to be a happy, attractive, loving family. But closer examination reveals that they are, in fact, displaced persons struggling with wounds too raw to examine, secrets too dark to reveal or to live with. At Elm Grove Farm, the Fletchers confront the Bellows family, descendants of the slaves whose family has worked the farm for a century and a half. The last member of the land-owning family disappeared under mysterious, possibly sinister, circumstances years before, and the Bellowses, with their whole extended family, have taken possession of the main house and live there happily. <<< close excerpt

Queen of Hearts, Simon and Schuster, 1986

Dreaming of Heroes, Morrow, 1984 see more >>>

From the jacket copy:

Susan Richards Shreve has created, in Jamie Kendall Waters, a central character who can offer full range to her remarkable and passionate talent. Even as a child, Jamie refuses to back away from trouble. Given her temperament and the events of her adolescence and young womanhood, Jamie's decision to be ordained a priest in defiance of the canons of the Episcopal Church is perhaps inevitable. But her two great romantic passions, first for Olympic runner Douglas McIntire and then for Father Nicholas Seymour , the Bishop of Washington's National Cathedral, make her a woman of the earth as well as of the spirit. And the series of homes she establishes for the redemption of child prostitutes provides further evidence of the worldly side to her character. But only after she understands the threat that she herself poses to others can Jamie achieve the fulfillment she seeks. <<< close excerpt

Miracle Play, Morrow, 1981

Children of Power, Macmillan, 1979

A Woman Like That, Atheneum, 1977 see more >>>

From the jacket copy:

This novel is as delicate and strong as a spider web. Paradox is the very heart of this story of love, betrayal, death and regeneration through love. While its conception is epic in scheme (it focuses on three generations of a family in Washington and Philadelphia), its execution is instantaneous: it can be read comfortably in two sittings. It is Emily Fielding of whom the title speaks, child of a loveless, though sometimes passionate, marriage that ends in murder, presumably freeing Emily to live her own life. It becomes a life of self-contradiction. She takes lovers but has no relationships. Spurning marriage, she willingly becomes pregnant and bears a child, an elemental love that will order and control her life. Articulate, controlled, attractive, yet with an edge of hysteria showing through, she is vulnerable to love when it finally comes in the person of Stephen Williamson. <<< close excerpt

A Fortunate Madness, Houghton Mifflin, 1974