With Bernard, her husband of fifty-five years, now in the grave, seventy-eight-year-old Harriet Chance impulsively sets sail on an ill-conceived Alaskan cruise that her late husband had planned. But what she hoped would be a voyage leading to a new lease on life becomes a surprising and revelatory journey into Harriet’s past.
In This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! Jonathan Evison has crafted a big-hearted novel with an endearing heroine at the helm. Through Harriet, he paints a bittersweet portrait of a postmodern everywoman, her story told with great warmth, humanity, and humor. Part dysfunctional love story, part poignant exploration of the mother-daughter relationship, nothing is what it seems in this tale of acceptance, reexamination, and forgiveness.
Jonathan Evison (born 1968), is an American writer best known for his novels All About Lulu, West of Here, and The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving. His work, often distinguished by its emotional resonance and offbeat humor, has been compared by critics to a variety of authors, most notably J.D. Salinger, Charles Dickens,T.C. Boyle, and John Irving. Sherman Alexie has called Evison "the most honest white man alive." His debut novel, All About Lulu, published in 2008 by Soft Skull Press, won critical acclaim, including the Washington State Book Award, and landed on many year-end “Best of” lists, including Hudson Booksellers, where it enjoyed the added distinction of being the only independent title selected in 2008. The L Magazine included All About Lulu in its Best Books of the Decade.[5] Evison's second novel, the New York Times Bestselling West of Here, was released in 2011 by Algonquin Books. West of Here won the 2012 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Awardand the Booklist Editor's Choice Award, and was named Book of the Year by Hudson Booksellers. Editor Chuck Adams (Water for Elephants, A Reliable Wife, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England) has called West of Here the best novel he's worked on in over four decades of publishing. His third novel, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, released in 2012, was also widely acclaimed, earning him his second Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award in as many years. In the New York Times, Janet Maslin called the novel "Evison's most stealthily powerful novel." Upon its release, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving was motioned for film by Rob Burnett of Worldwide Pants, and was produced in 2015, starring Paul Rudd, Selena Gomez, and Craig Roberts, for release in 2016.
