Product Description Beatrice Hempel, seventh-grade teacher, is new to teaching, new to the school, newly engaged, and newly bereft of her devoted father. Overwhelmed by her newness, she struggles to figure out what is expected of her in life and at work. About the Author Sarah Shun-lien Bynum's first novel, Madeleine Is Sleeping, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2004. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Time, House, Georgia Review, and Best American Short Stories. She teaches writing at the University of California-San Diego and lives in Los Angeles with her family.Stephen McLaughlin was born in Washington, DC, in 1951 and grew up there and on a farm in the Virginia Piedmont. He studied English and philosophy and worked in theater as an actor and director. He has also worked as a librarian, a musician, a landscaper, a cab driver and dispatcher, a handyman, an artist, and a waiter, among other things.Tavia Gilbert, an acclaimed narrator of more than four hundred full-cast and multivoice audiobooks for virtually every publisher in the industry, is an eight-time Audie nominee and the recipient of thirteen Earphones Awards, a Voice Arts Award, and a Listen-Up Award. With frequent inclusion on best of year and annual top ten lists, Tavia is a trusted and increasingly sought-after actress for work across every genre, from children's and YA, to literary fiction, nonfiction, and genre fiction. Audible recently named her a Genre-Defining Narrator: Master of Memoir, and Library Journal said of this highly acclaimed actress, "as close as you can get to a full cast narration with a solo voice." Tavia is a producer, singer, photographer, and a writer, as well as the cofounder of a feminist publishing company, Animal Mineral, with fiction and nonfiction focusing on relationships, love, and identity.