Seré Halverson - The Underside of Joy

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Set against the backdrop of Redwood forests and shimmering vineyards, Seré Prince Halverson’s compelling debut tells the story of two women, bound by an unspeakable loss, who each claims to be the mother of the same two children. To Ella Beene, happiness means living in the northern California river town of Elbow with her husband, Joe, and his two young children. Yet one summer day Joe breaks his own rule—
—and a sleeper wave strikes him down, drowning not only the man but his many secrets.
For three years, Ella has been the only mother the kids have known and has believed that their biological mother, Paige, abandoned them. But when Paige shows up at the funeral, intent on reclaiming the children, Ella soon realizes there may be more to Paige and Joe’s story. “Ella’s the best thing that’s happened to this family,” say her close-knit Italian-American in-laws, for generations the proprietors of a local market. But their devotion quickly falters when the custody fight between mother and stepmother urgently and powerfully collides with Ella’s quest for truth.
The Underside of Joy Weaving a rich fictional tapestry abundantly alive with the glorious natural beauty of the novel’s setting, Halverson is a captivating guide through the flora and fauna of human emotion-grief and anger, shame and forgiveness, happiness and its shadow complement… the underside of joy.
Review “The Underside of Joy” covers the transforming experiences of most of our lives — marriage, parenthood and death — with maturity, understanding and grace… the book offers a lot to think about. I suspect it will be a book club favorite.”
—M.L. Johnson, Associated Press “[An] exquisite debut… moving and hopeful”
—People Style Watch “Seré Prince Halverson’s debut novel is a faultless exploration of sadness and shame, anger and forgiveness; a story well told about people we would like to know.”
—Shelf Awareness “Halverson’s gloriously down-to-earth novel is so pitch perfect that as readers reluctantly reach the last page, wanting more, they will have to take it on faith that this really is her first fiction.”
—Library Journal, Starred Review “…As she mines the family secrets her characters hold close and how those affect their relationships with one another, Halverson proves she’s a wordsmith and a storyteller to keep an eye on.”
—Bookpage, Fiction Top Pick “A poignant debut about mothers, secrets and sacrifices…Halverson avoids sentimentality, aiming for higher ground in this lucid and graceful examination of the dangers and blessings of familial bonds.”
—Kirkus Reviews “Halverson paints a lovely picture of small-town life and intimate family drama…Nuanced characters and lack of cliché make for a winning debut.”
—Publishers Weekly “Halverson’s debut novel marks her as a strong new voice in women’s fiction…this would make an excellent book-club choice.”
— From the Back Cover “The writing in The Underside of Joy is as purely beautiful as the story is emotionally complex. When Ella Beene is wrenched from a state of unexamined happiness into confusion and grief, she finds that her only hope of emerging whole is to face searing and long-buried truths. Ella embarks on a difficult journey, both morally and materially, one that requires her to risk losing everything she most loves. I cheered (sometimes through tears) her every step.”
— “Searingly smart and exquisitely written, Halverson’s knockout debut limns family, marriage and a custody battle in a way that gets under your skin and leaves you changed. To say I loved this book would be an understatement.”
—New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You Caroline Leavitt

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‘The Corvus brachyrhynchos are so smart and adaptable,’ I went on, ‘that they partake in cooperative breeding. In other words, they share in mothering, in all aspects of raising each other’s babies. They didn’t need anyone to tell them that it takes a village.’

Paige and I have found our own way to share in raising Annie and Zach, and though it’s not perfect, it is what you might call cooperative. She lives in the next town, and we brag to each other about everything from Zach’s soccer game to his reading abilities and his latest math-test grade. We know that other people don’t want to hear it. We know not to bombard the kid with our relief that he is okay. (He is eight now, and starting to roll his eyes sometimes when I cover his forehead with kisses. But only sometimes.) Depending on whose turn it is to have them spend the night, one of us will call the other, unable to wait another day to report, ‘Well, the guy aced his project. He seems to know his stuff.’ It is our way of saying, Yes, we have made mistakes, mistakes that have hurt our children, but there is grace in this life of ours. Sometimes we still disagree. Sometimes we have misunderstandings. We are still finding our way. But I am bound to you by Annie and Zach; there is no one else on this planet who cares about them as much as you and I do.

Annie is eleven now, and the other day she told me that she is seriously considering medical school. ‘What kind of doctor do you want to be?’ I asked her.

‘The kind that saves people,’ she said. Annie still talks about when her daddy died and Zach almost died. ‘Or, perhaps, a trombonist.’

‘You could be a trombonist that saves people.’

‘Exactly.’

What I want to tell her, but what she will have to discover on her own, is that no matter what she chooses to do for her profession, she will save people, and she will also do people grave harm — and they will be the same people, the ones she loves.

Sometimes when she and Zach are with Paige, and I have the day off, after I’ve played for hours in the garden, the knees of my jeans damp with that wondrous soil, I follow Callie down to the redwood grove, our sacred arboreal cathedral. Often, my arms and hair are still warm from the sun, but the air under the trees is always cool and dim. I lie on my back and look up through heavy branches, up at unknown particles drifting in the shadowed light. I whisper, ‘My man of the Sequoia sempervirens. Peace be with you.’ I whisper, ‘I love you.’ I whisper, ‘I miss you.’

And so it has been for me in this place called Elbow, where the river bends and gives before it leads out to the Pacific, where years ago I stumbled upon a certain kind of happiness. I know now that the most genuine happiness is kept afloat by an underlying sorrow. We all break the surface into this life already howling the cries of our ancestors, bearing their DNA, their eye colours and their scars, their glory and their shame. It is theirs; it is ours. It is the underside of joy.

About the Author

Seré Prince Halverson lives in Northern California and worked as a freelance copywriter for twenty years while she wrote fiction. She and her husband have four grown-up children. She is a stepmum, and grew up with a stepmum.

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