A Mentor and Her Muse

by Susan Sage (Author)

Available on Amazon
Permission is never explicitly granted, but shortly after school is out for the summer, Maggie and Tae head for the Southeast.
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Book Description:

Under the guise of mentor and muse, a frustrated writer and her ambitious teenage protégé take an illicit summer road trip fraught with racial and sexual tension. This is a compelling psychological novel about social norms, artistic ambition, and obsession.

Maggie Barnett works in the media center of a school in Flint, Michigan where she meets Taezha Riverton, an aspiring teenage writer. After discovering that Maggie is also a writer, Taezha turns to her as both mentor and friend.

Alone and childless, it’s not enough for Maggie to take Tae to restaurants and poetry slams. Although Tae’s mother has nothing against Maggie, she is less than thrilled when Maggie proposes to take her daughter on a summer road trip. Permission is never explicitly granted, but shortly after school is out for the summer, Maggie and Tae head for the Southeast.

Review for A Mentor and her Muse by Susan Sage For those of above average intelligence (required here), you’ll enjoy this road trip tale of a white 50ish jaded and lonely female educator that helps a 15 year old inner city black girl (and herself) escape the economically depressing Flint Michigan summer. Off to Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina, we are taken on an odyssey of self-examination, and mighty revelation awaits both lead characters. This is highly original work for realism with literary overtones filled with clarity and skilled exposition of characterizations. The lead character Maggie is the big show, a teacher/writer painfully self-aware of all things to the point of depression and hedging madness. She has known great tragedy and loss, thus life seems like a series of events to be endured to some lackluster end. The narrative of Maggie is told with raw visceral terms and some flashbacks that perfectly fill gaps of understanding. The author has a smooth natural style of diction. This is a tale of inner space of emotions dealing with family, love, sex, aging, work, fulfillment, happiness, and having something, someplace we might belong. This is a story of the yearning and sadness and the hope for something better, a cohesion. It is a haunting tale of rescue for the hopeless and rescuing the self from the angst, the complete symphony of disconnection, to go it alone if necessary, and all against the question of time, how much time do we have left? I found the story to be alluring and had to know to the end what would become of these two women. A well-crafted novel of both sadness and measured hope, I found this to be original in style, which is the first and main component of a thinking author. I was emotionally overcome by the ending having a mysterious beauty of untethered iconoclasm.

-- Red Butler

Susan Sage (Author)

Twitter ▸ @SusanSage

Susan E. Sage, was born (1956) in Detroit, Michigan, to Joyce and Robert Sage. Youngest of three daughters, Susan, received her undergraduate degree in English from Wayne State University in Detroit and has done post-graduate work at the University of Michigan-Flint. She was a recipient of the Tompkin’s Award in Poetry (1981), and has published her poetry in numerous literary magazines. Susan is a fan of Magic Realism and Contemporary Fantasy literature. ‘Insominy’ is her third, though first published novel. Susan presently resides in Flushing, Michigan. She has one daughter (Sarah), loves cats, smooth jazz, blues, art, and poetry.

Permission is never explicitly granted, but shortly after school is out for the summer, Maggie and Tae head for the Southeast.

Dear Reader, author’s recently published book “A Mentor and Her Muse” is now available on leading bookstores, get your copy now and help the author by writing a review of the book.
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