Great Divide

by Emily Kiernan

Great Divide is a novel about memory, the power of the past to shape and subsume the present, and the pressing, terrible need to escape the drowning force of history. The reader inhabits the conflicted and mercurial interior of Jane, a young woman fleeing from years of abuse in her Oregon seacoast home to an uncertain freedom with her boyfriend in the landlocked new world of the Kansas plains. As Jane travels, her progress is threatened by nostalgia and attachment, responsibility and ambivalence, and, finally, by a massive flood which threatens to overwhelm both her past and her future. Great Divide is a novel precariously afloat atop a sea of time, at once alluring and threatening, beckoning us to dive in.

Genres: Fiction

106 pages, Paperback

First published March 25, 2014

About the author

Emily Kiernan is the author of a novel, Great Divide. She writes about islands, vaudeville, implacable but unjustified feelings of abandonment, The West, and places that aren't the way she remembered them. Emily is a graduate of the MFA writing program at the California Institute of the Arts. Her short fiction has appeared in Pank, The Collagist, Monkeybicycle, decomP, The Good Men Project, Dark Sky, Redivider, JMWW, and other journals. Her work has received mentions and awards from Unstuck Magazine, A Room of Her Own Foundation, Wigleaf Magazine, and others. She resides in Berkeley, California with her man and her dog.

Reviews

[Tidijo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Divide is a rich read, the kind of book you read slowly, putting it down periodically to savor… unwilling to let go of the beauty of that sentence just yet.
The language and imagery is so beautifully crafted that some passages could almost pass as poetry but it is true to its’ title: Great Divide: A Novel. It is a novel with well developed characters and plot that pull you inside them. (Indeed, a particularly rainy night while I read this novel made me feel anxious- the rain and flood in the book creeping into my reality.) Novel, also, is her use of standard print and italics to differentiate past and present and her use of second person/you to accentuate the main character’s emotional journey as she travels just ahead of the storm. Great book!

[Sarah Schantz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novella is swollen with story, and eventually it bursts; it floods. The use of second person to exemplify the narrator's trauma was executed exquisitely. There is a certain science or mathematics to the calculations and delivery of Emily Kiernan's prose that leaves the reader both aching and satisfied. Other reviewers have commented on the use of memory in this book, but the use of the present tense is just as striking (and perhaps the reason the past is presented so well). I plan on using excerpts from this novella in my creative writing workshops. Kiernan captures the complexities of dysfunctional families, the guilt of surviving, the ghost that is trauma, and the sheer force that comes from hope.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning book. Kiernan deftly describes through the impending environmental upheaval of massive flooding the powerfully pent up emotions that challenge the fragile self of the character sexually abused by her father as she tries to leave her past for the unknown of a new relationship.

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great story!! The interactions between the family members is so real and so raw. The author perfectly captures the hopeless feeling of trying so hard but being unable to connect due to being in different places mentally and emotionally.

[Sara Gerot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seriously wonderful!