The world demands it of us.”Īs Mira evolves, those she’s surrounded by do, too. “She evolved because she had to - because a storm and its aftermath required her to stand strong and to know what mattered most to her. “I consider myself to be middle-ish, and very much like Mira,” Beth said. Mira considers herself middle-ish, and yet, as the story folds, she proves to be much more. “Beach Haven, before and after the storm, felt both familiar and new.”Īt the center of “This is the Story of You” is Mira, older sister to a very ill brother daughter to an independent mother friend to a small bunch of spectacular friends. “I’d grown up going to Stone Harbor, N.J., and, before that, Ocean City, N.J.,” she said. That singular trip became more trips as “This is the Story of You” unfolded.
When a superstorm defies all predictions and devastates the island, Mira finds her mother and sick brother stranded on the mainland and herself quite alone.īeth’s book originates with the author’s obsession with the sea and from a trip she took to Beach Haven during the off-season. They’re made of strong stuff, which is good, because what’s about to hit them is rough. Mira Banul and her friends are year-rounders, the people who stay when the summer sun has long gone. “This is the Story of You” takes place on Haven, a 6-mile-long, half-mile-wide stretch of Barrier Island. Perhaps I hear those voices so clearly because I teach memoir at the University of Pennsylvania, and we go deep and far, together, in that class. And those are the voices I hear - the voices of the young - when I begin to write. “And within those communities there are young people.
“I write stories about communities of people - young and old, afraid and brave, lost and found,” Beth told Cracking the Cover.
Because when I go for long stretches (a year, I’d guess) I get physically ill from not writing.”īeth is the award-winning author of 19 books, including “ Going Over, Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir,” and “ Small Damages.” Her latest novel, “T his is the Story of You,” is written specifically with teens in mind. “Because I have tried to stop so many times, and I can’t. Beth Kephart writes because she cannot help it.
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