Books | Pamela Carter Joern

At the Corner of Past and Future

A Collection of Life Stories

New Release

Excerpt from the Author's Introduction

"A life is made up moments, intersections of time and place, memory and truth, life and art. Through all of it, we search for meaning. Patterns and purpose.

These pieces have been written over a long period of time. They touch on various aspects of my life: growing up in Nebraska, raising children, writing, surviving cancer. Some themes recur from different angles. If you know my fiction, you’ll hear some echoes. When I set out to gather these pieces into a manuscript, I thought I should have a definitive path. But life is messy. Things I planned for didn’t happen; other things did. Most of the time, I feel either mildly lost or cheerfully sailing. Either way, I don’t know where I’m going.

Over time, I’ve learned to think less about life as a destination.

Still, I am always seeking. I want to be awake in my life. I want my heart and spirit to twang with receptivity. These essays are my attempt to pay attention. I hope, at the very least, they show a mind at work."

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Toby's Last Resort

In this thoughtful and moving novel, Pamela Carter Joern probes the complications of family relationships, identity, belonging, and the impact of long-held secrets.

"A lovely story, told with straightforward grace. Award-winning author Joern has won herself a new reader."

--Micki Fuhrman, Roundup Magazine

"This is a kind-hearted, humorous, and graceful novel full of secrets, regrets, and redemptions. I immediately related to the drama of this beautifully drawn book about an eclectic cast of characters on the prairie and Sandhills of western Nebraska. Pamela Carter Joern writes about the Great Plains with the authority of a biologist and the passion of a poet."

-- Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs and Godspeed

"Toby's Last Resort is both lyrical and riveting. The writing is beautiful, the plot intricate and the characters fully developed. The setting in the Nebraska Sandhills is inspired. Joern demonstrates with every page how the lives of ordinary people, when closely examined, are always extraordinarily complex, heart-breaking and important. I loved every aspect of this fine novel and I recommend it to all."

--Mary Pipher, author of Seeking Peace and

Women Rowing North

"Pamela Carter Joern understands the flinty women of Western Nebraska like few other writers. Toby's Last Resort is a beautiful, funny, and wrenching story that explores the love of the land accompanied by a desire for independence and privacy. I loved this novel, as I did The Floor of the Sky. My hope is that a third novel about this family and their world might be in the offing."

--Maureen Millea Smith, author of When

Charlotte Comes Home and The Enigma of Iris Murphy

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The Floor of the Sky

Nebraska Book Award

Barnes and Noble Great New Writers' Selection

Alex Award

Takes place on the Bluestem Ranch 10 years before

Toby's Last Resort.

"Joern intricately weaves together a compelling family saga and a beautifully rendered paean to the land her characters love and are struggling to preserve. . . Joern's lyrical and painterly descriptions of the vast Sandhills are the perfect backdrop for this subtle drama."

--Booklist

"Playwright Joern's characters are as stern as the land, and the world of her debut novel is sturdy and memorable."

--Publishers Weekly

"An emotionally rich first novel about an unwed pregnant teen spending the summer with her grandmother in the hardscrabble Nebraska Sandhills . . Seventy-two and long widowed, Toby is no fawning grandma."

--Kirkus Reviews

". . . a true gem of the storyteller's art, written with great compassion, wit and wisdom about the human condition, family secrets, and the sweeping changes in contemporary rural America." --Midwest Book Review

"Pamela Carter Joern writes with compassion and a wry sense of humor, in a direct and true style that takes in the vivid details of the world of the Nebraska Sandhills and the complexities and nuances of her characters' inner lives. Her work may bring to mind the novels of Kent Haruf and Larry McMurtry--though, like the fiercely independent women that populate her novel, Joern is clearly an original."

--Dan Chaon, author of You Remind Me of Me

"[Joern's] characters are sensible, endearing, and deeply haunted . . . Secrets, old and new, keep the past constantly bumping into the present, making for a mesmerizing family saga."

--Timothy Schaffert, author of The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God

"Pamela Carter Joern is a stunningly talented writer, a fearless teller of hard truth. . . The Floor of the Sky is a tale of quiet heroics, a story of tenacity and courage, an intimate glimpse into the lives of independent ranchers determined to survive. A powerful portrayal of family, land, and loyalty."

--Sheila O'Connor, author of Where No Gods Came and Tokens of Grace

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In Reach

Nebraska Book Award

Finalist: Minnesota Book Award

Related Short Stories

". . . What makes this collection hit home for readers are the town's imagery, the underlying tensions of tangled relationships and the array of distinct individuals presented. . . These stories are raw and wrenching. The events that tear Joern's characters apart will do the same to the reader. That's part of the collection's beauty. Her deeply empathetic prose masterfully captures nuanced emotions that linger after her tales conclude."

--Emily Case, Nebraska Life Magazine

". . . the stories of In Reach seem taut, pared down, precise, as great short stories often do, even as Joern writes with great insight into the psyche of characters."

--Kirk Zebolsky, Omaha Books

"With prose as honest in its portrayal of joy and hope as it is in its portrayal of sorrow and desperation, the stories in Pamela Carter Joern's collection, In Reach, offer a beautiful and often heartrending glimpse into the longings, fears, accomplishments, and tragedies of ordinary people. . . What I found most impressive about this collection was the range of subjects the author covered with both honesty and insight."

--Aaron Klink, Collegeville Institute website

"In Reach is an elegant, pitch perfect book . . . Pamela Joern has once again demonstrated that she's the real thing, a masterful writer capable of showing us the world through the passions, disappointments, secrets, losses, and small achievements of characters whose submerged lives are played out against the harsh beauty of the Nebraska plains."

--Ladette Randolph, author of Haven's Wake

"In Reach is a Winesburg, Ohio for the contemporary Great Plains . .

Filled with complicated human stories, it a joy to read and will stay with the reader a long time."

--Dan O'Brien, author of A Wild Idea

"Pamela Carter Joern's fictional village of Reach, Nebraska, is populated by people you have known, or known of, all your life. In these glimpses of life as it is really lived, you will encounter your aunt Ella, your grandfather Leland, even the uncle no one mentions. You may agree that God is not absent if you are there. You will never forget Marlene and Vernon. Each character is doing "the best he can do" to harvest satisfaction from their lives. Searching for connections, you will find these folks in reach of your heart."

--Linda Hasselstrom, author of No Place Like Home and Dirt Songs

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The Plain Sense of Things

Midwest Bookseller's Connections Pick

A Novel In Stories

". . . Joern gives us a portrait of a rural Nebraska family from 1930 through 1979 . . . As we follow the family through the Great Depression, World War II, and the postwar boom, we see the changing American attitudes about marriage, work, and family."

--Library Journal

"The Plain Sense of Things is a book about losses, little deaths that wear away at people and at families, but these little deaths aren't the real story. What is the real story is how people handle those little deaths with some kind of perpetual hope and resilience, a sense that having someone to care for, to come back to, to hurt with, gives all failures and "little deaths" meaning."

--Diane Drake, North Dakota Quarterly

"The clarity and honesty of Joern's prose impart a quiet intensity to this novel about a family enduring a hardscrabble existence in western Nebraska. Shaped by place and by each other, strong, flawed characters struggle through love and pain to create rich and dignified lives well worthy of our attention."

--Tripp Ryder, Carleton College Bookstore

"The Plain Sense of Things is spare, generational, filled with to-the-bone experiences . . . amazing, [a] good read, great for discussion."

--Glenda Martin, Book Women

"Pam Joern works her quiet, penetrating magic to tell a deeply moving story of endurance and family love and loyalty. . . Joern depicts a hardscrabble Midwestern world whose simplicity and starkness are deceiving. Her characters are complex, passionate, memorable. . . Nebraska has found its chronicler and the world a first-rate storyteller."

--Julia Alvarez, author of In the Time of Butterflies

"There is a lovely solemnity to the lives of these characters--a hardness that Joern knows is alloyed with an abiding tenderness. That undercurrent is carried along in deceptively simple prose, writing that is stunningly clear."

--Jane Hamilton, author of The Book of Ruth and The Map of the World

"A moving family saga full off memorable characters whose struggles to survive the hardships of rural Nebraska life will haunt the reader."

--Jonis Agee, author of The River Wife

One of these stories, "Never Mind," was adapted into a one-act play for the Twin Cities Fringe Festival (2012) by Karen Bair and Helena Webb.

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