www.susanncokal.com
Breath and Bones: In 1884, Famke Summerfugl is ousted from her convent in Denmark for ... sensuousness and pulled from servitude by a second-rate painter named Albert Castle. Loving to be looked at, and able to stand perfectly still without shivering, Famke is the ideal artist's model.
When Albert takes his eight-foot masterpiece and leaves his model behind, Famke sets out over the Atlantic, convinced that she is his muse.
Following Mirabilis, her highly acclaimed debut, Susann Cokal blends pre-Raphaelite painting, American brothels, Utahan polygamists, a bit of cross-dressing, a dynamite-wielding labor movement, one California millionaire, and the invention of electrical stimulation (as treatment for consumption) into a comic novel that gallops across the American west.
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Susann Cokal was born in California and lived most of her life there and in the Southwest, where she found much of the material for Breath and Bones. She also spent a year studying medieval history, art history, and literature in Poitiers, France, the inspiration for Mirabilis. After earning two PhD’s (one from Berkeley in comparative literature, one from Binghamton University in creative writing), she taught at California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo. She now lives in Richmond, Virginia, and teaches creative writing and contemporary narrative at Virginia Commonwealth University.
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