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Alison Espach Biography

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“I found it much more healing, to be honest, to take care of my father's plants.' ...He knew he had cared for something--truly and deeply--and he saw how those things came alive again. He had been so convinced that the only solution was to run away...The solution was always the opposite of what we expected it t be. The solution was to stay here, to plant a rosebush in the middle of Main Street. To wait, to have patience, to watch new life grow up all around him. And now, it's been years. Now, our town depends on Billy. Our town comes to him for help. They ask him to line the walls of the church for their weddings. They ask him to cover the graves of their dead. They have forgiven him.”

GrowthGriefHealingForgivenessParentsPlantsDependableDependFloristFather S Death
Book:Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance
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“Mom looked like this might make her cry. And maybe she would. Mom could cry while doing just about anything. She was a champion weeper. I don't know who gives out awards for this kind of thing, but Mom could win awards. I have seen her weep while vacuuming, I have seen her sob while standing in front of the microwave waiting for peas to defrost I have seen her break down in the mailman's arms. She even cried once while eating ice cream...”

GriefChampionCryingWeepingSobbingChampionsChampion Weeper
Book:Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance
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“He couldn't bring himself to let the plants die. His own father had sown and raised most of these plants, and suddenly, Billy wanted to understand why. Billy wanted access to his father's brain in a way he never cared about before. 'That's what happens when parents die,' he says. 'All of the sudden, you want an answer to every question you never thought to ask them.”

DeathGriefParentsGrievingPlants
Book:Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance
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“But Wharton hadn’t published any of her books while she lived in this house. At Land’s End, she had been unknown, an unhappy married woman. She had not yet become the real Edith Wharton. Not yet divorced. Not yet a novelist. Not yet a war correspondent in France. She wonders how terrifying it felt, not to know any of this about herself, to sit out on this big lawn, looking at the sea, feeling like she was at the very end of it all. She wonders what it was that made her realize there was somewhere else to go.”

Fiction NovelEdith Wharton
Book:The Wedding People
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“Phoebe is disappointed, too. She didn’t have a speech, but she was still looking forward to getting up there, speaking in front of the crowd, saying nice things about what Lila has meant to her this week, and really taking her place as Lila’s friend. But maybe this is why Lila has no real friends, Phoebe thinks. She doesn’t know how to keep them. She keeps trading them in for something else.”

Friendship
Book:The Wedding People
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