Books with author Haven Kimmell

When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965, Mooreland, Indiana, was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people. Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would bolt around the house, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this witty and lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent postwar period-people helped their neighbors, went to church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards. Laced with fine storytelling, sharp wit, dead-on observations, and moments of sheer joy, Haven Kimmel's straight-shooting portrait of her childhood gives us a heroine who is wonderfully sweet and sly as she navigates the quirky adult world that surrounds Zippy.

From the internationally bestselling author of The Solace of Leaving Early, a funny, heartwrenching and unforgettable novel following the fortunes of a feisty young female pool hustler.Cassie Claiborne, at ten, was surely too young to be the head of her disparate family. But who else was going to do it Growing up in Indiana with her distant, heartbroken mother, Laura, her fragile, eccentric sister Belle, and her beloved grandfather Poppy, Cassie got sick of waiting for her father to come home from his everlasting gambling and drinking binges and took matters into her own hands. Taught by her father to play pool, Cassie was a natural and was soon hustling experienced pool players and winning.We follow Cassie from a complex little girl to a rebellious and impetuous young woman as she tries to create a world for her mother and sister. Overwhelmed but compelled by her familys love, Cassie feels herself drawn back to the past by the stories of her mother's youth, and she leaves her town for New Orleans, hoping that there she can find a truth to soothe her wounded soul and to allow herself the happiness she has been denied.Funny, heartbreaking, full of the eccentricity of small-town life and the overwrought drama of the close-knit family, Something Rising (Light and Swift) is the story of a very unique young woman who knows that 'the worst thing that can happen to you is that you will find what you seek'. It tells of grief and love and growing up and leaving home in a way that is desperately sad but ultimately uplifting.