Clara at the Edge

October 1, 2017
In her seven decades on earth, Clara Breckenridge has survived the untimely loss of her husband, the tragic death of her daughter just months later, and now, in her waning years, a ruthless displacement from her home by unfazed city developers. But Clara is unshakable. She loads her houseits aging structure in all its gloryonto a flatbed truck and moves it closer to her son, Frank, in Nevada. Throughout his adulthood, Frank and Clara have maintained a complicated estrangement. Clara, feeling daunted by the task of laying straight her failures as a mother, is empowered by the magically real colony of wasps that has followed and protected her since adolescence. Regardless of whether or not the buzzing morsels of wisdom exist outside her head, Clara is determined to pull her son (and herself) back into the magic circle of love that has been empty since his father and sister passed. In alternating, omniscient, wasp-on-the-wall perspectives, Fox's writing says yes to every surreal and absurd possibility life offers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)