What do you think?
Rate this book
Resolutions: A Family in Stories
Molly May is barely a teenager, but she is adept at navigating extremes. Between her self-help-addicted and often-intolerant mother, Jasmine; rebellious and idealistic sister, Allie; and two younger brothers—Joey, who seems destined for stardom, and Myron, who seems destined for prison—she has her work cut out for her.
Jasmine, a mother of four, is just trying to find some semblance of freedom. She dreams of finding relief from recurring energy 'shifts' that she attributes to a curse. It isn’t until her oldest, Allie, is brutally attacked, and everyone is reunited, that her energy shifts for good. Resolutions is an exploration of freedom and perspective through a coming-of-age lens.
From the author:
"In 2015, when I began this manuscript, America was at the precipice of major political and social shifts. Propaganda was infiltrating the internet in wide-reaching but familiarly divisive ways. Virtual industries promised that bean-bag chairs and bourbon-flavored donuts at work were too trendy to be capitalist, while factories across Middle America shut down and small towns began to atrophy..."
Jasmine, a mother of four, is just trying to find some semblance of freedom. She dreams of finding relief from recurring energy 'shifts' that she attributes to a curse. It isn’t until her oldest, Allie, is brutally attacked, and everyone is reunited, that her energy shifts for good. Resolutions is an exploration of freedom and perspective through a coming-of-age lens.
From the author:
"In 2015, when I began this manuscript, America was at the precipice of major political and social shifts. Propaganda was infiltrating the internet in wide-reaching but familiarly divisive ways. Virtual industries promised that bean-bag chairs and bourbon-flavored donuts at work were too trendy to be capitalist, while factories across Middle America shut down and small towns began to atrophy..."
- GenresFictionShort Stories
160 pages, Paperback
Published March 4, 2020
2975 people want to read
About the author
Jen Knox
23 books498 followersThe Founder and Executive Director of Unleash Creatives, Jen Knox is an educator and storyteller who teaches writing, leadership, and meditation.
Her books include the short story collection The Glass City (Hollywood, CA: Winner, Prize Americana for Prose), and the novels We Arrive Uninvited (Steel Toe Books) and Chaos Magic (Kallisto Gaia Press).
Her first essay collection, At Work, will be released by Cornerstone Press UWSP in 2027.
Jen's writing has earned multiple awards. Her short stories, poetry, and essays have been featured in textbooks, classrooms, and publications in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Turkey, India, and Scotland. Her fiction appears in The Best Small Fictions (Braddock Avenue Books), The Adirondack Review, Sivana East, Chicago Tribune's Printers Row, Chicago Quarterly Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Crannog, Cutthroat Magazine, Elephant Journal, Fairlight Books, Fiction Southeast, Juked, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, MJI News, Poor Claudia, The Saturday Evening Post, The Santa Fe Writers Project Quarterly, NPR, Short Story America, and Sequestrum, among over a hundred other publications. Read many of her stories here.
Her books include the short story collection The Glass City (Hollywood, CA: Winner, Prize Americana for Prose), and the novels We Arrive Uninvited (Steel Toe Books) and Chaos Magic (Kallisto Gaia Press).
Her first essay collection, At Work, will be released by Cornerstone Press UWSP in 2027.
Jen's writing has earned multiple awards. Her short stories, poetry, and essays have been featured in textbooks, classrooms, and publications in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Turkey, India, and Scotland. Her fiction appears in The Best Small Fictions (Braddock Avenue Books), The Adirondack Review, Sivana East, Chicago Tribune's Printers Row, Chicago Quarterly Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Crannog, Cutthroat Magazine, Elephant Journal, Fairlight Books, Fiction Southeast, Juked, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, MJI News, Poor Claudia, The Saturday Evening Post, The Santa Fe Writers Project Quarterly, NPR, Short Story America, and Sequestrum, among over a hundred other publications. Read many of her stories here.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 15, 2020
I wrote this book. I also had a very extensive launch planned starting early March, in partnership with AUX Media, then COVID-19 hit and I didn't feel as though I was in a good place to promote. Accordingly, this novel-in-stories hasn't made the rounds I'd like it to make yet, but I put everything into this collection of fiction, so I'm rating it 5 stars. Total bias. I hope you read it. Jen
April 20, 2020
This multi-layered, carefully crafted saga of a family, takes on not just what it means to love even the most broken parent and sibling, but what it means to be an American who yearns for a life never quite within her grasp. I will never forget Molly May or her mother Jasmine, who, Knox reveals at the end, is so much more than the reader -- or the children she tried to raise -- understood.
June 3, 2021
In short stories set between 2014 and 2030, Resolutions: A Family in Stories accomplishes its purpose, the resolution of the mysteries of a troubled family. It sounds simple, but looking at definitions, it’s clear that there are many forms of resolution. Think of magnifying small pieces, clarifying complexities, solving problems, determination, and bringing to a conclusion. Any and all of those apply to the book that author Jen Knox has created. And taken together, despite pain and loss, the individual expressions of enduring love in these stories create a satisfying and healing whole.
Many of us think of resolutions as goals for the New Year. But in this family, which has already lost a husband and father, there are only glimpses of the good times before. Now a widowed and impatient mother of four, Jasmine works hard at selling beauty products to support them all. Resolutions have become a regular survival tool. Handing out index cards and Sharpie pens, she demands her children set goals.
“Allie calls Mom a Resolution Nazi. Mom likes to say that we’re a goal-driven family on an upward trajectory. ‘We’re go-getters, and go-getters make SMART goals,’ she says, looking over our shoulders like the worst kind of teacher.”
Jasmine struggles and loses ground, her frustration compounded by growing mental illness. Her neglect and eventual abandonment of her children is at the heart of this book, yet the author carefully holds the weight of that sorrow, so that we can stick with it and discover how such a thing can be borne, understood, even overcome.
Allie, the oldest girl, has run away, leaving Molly May, not yet 14, stuck in the role of substitute parent to her younger brothers, Myron and Joey. Jasmine is heartbroken at the rift with Allie, and fights often and loudly with Rattle, an ex-con who has moved in, crowding the small house.
Molly May tells most of these stories. She suffers hearing loss, gets a job at a packing plant, loses her mother, regains her sister, and takes care of her aging grandmother. Together, the sisters get the younger boys through school, and the four kids create a small business that sustains them for years. But there are deep wounds to overcome. Well-written and engaging, the twists and turns, the dialogue, and the working class settings feel like modern America.
This is pre-pandemic, pre-racial-protest America, but the context doesn’t ignore the political. Knox uses the two sisters to acknowledge 2020’s divisions. Allie is an activist early, and has a strong sense of injustice. It costs her, but she gradually learns how to channel that righteous anger. Molly May claims, “I never think too much about political news and world affairs. I just take for granted that we won’t blow up, or that if we do, it’ll happen before I can hear it.” Even in 2020, she admits to “ignoring the political ads.” Yet her always-political sister has the author’s last word on the subject.
“There’s no such thing as The Free,” Allie tells the reporter. “We spend our lives fighting to get as close as we can to freedom, but we’re all constrained by the biases of our parents, our predecessors. … We need to listen to each other to make better decisions; then maybe we won’t limit the next generation.” The children, by now, have grown up to make their own resolutions.
But politics is certainly not the focus of these stories—the true resolution is children overcoming trauma and growing up to thrive. In the end, Jasmine comforts herself and her kids by noting that they had “moments.” Resolutions takes those moments and gradually resolves them into something healing, a saga of individual and family survival. Life doesn’t always offer the solutions of literature, but in these stories Jen Knox does suggest hope, and gives us memorable, hard-working, and courageous models to follow.
Story Circle Book Reviews thanks Susan Schoch for this review.
Many of us think of resolutions as goals for the New Year. But in this family, which has already lost a husband and father, there are only glimpses of the good times before. Now a widowed and impatient mother of four, Jasmine works hard at selling beauty products to support them all. Resolutions have become a regular survival tool. Handing out index cards and Sharpie pens, she demands her children set goals.
“Allie calls Mom a Resolution Nazi. Mom likes to say that we’re a goal-driven family on an upward trajectory. ‘We’re go-getters, and go-getters make SMART goals,’ she says, looking over our shoulders like the worst kind of teacher.”
Jasmine struggles and loses ground, her frustration compounded by growing mental illness. Her neglect and eventual abandonment of her children is at the heart of this book, yet the author carefully holds the weight of that sorrow, so that we can stick with it and discover how such a thing can be borne, understood, even overcome.
Allie, the oldest girl, has run away, leaving Molly May, not yet 14, stuck in the role of substitute parent to her younger brothers, Myron and Joey. Jasmine is heartbroken at the rift with Allie, and fights often and loudly with Rattle, an ex-con who has moved in, crowding the small house.
Molly May tells most of these stories. She suffers hearing loss, gets a job at a packing plant, loses her mother, regains her sister, and takes care of her aging grandmother. Together, the sisters get the younger boys through school, and the four kids create a small business that sustains them for years. But there are deep wounds to overcome. Well-written and engaging, the twists and turns, the dialogue, and the working class settings feel like modern America.
This is pre-pandemic, pre-racial-protest America, but the context doesn’t ignore the political. Knox uses the two sisters to acknowledge 2020’s divisions. Allie is an activist early, and has a strong sense of injustice. It costs her, but she gradually learns how to channel that righteous anger. Molly May claims, “I never think too much about political news and world affairs. I just take for granted that we won’t blow up, or that if we do, it’ll happen before I can hear it.” Even in 2020, she admits to “ignoring the political ads.” Yet her always-political sister has the author’s last word on the subject.
“There’s no such thing as The Free,” Allie tells the reporter. “We spend our lives fighting to get as close as we can to freedom, but we’re all constrained by the biases of our parents, our predecessors. … We need to listen to each other to make better decisions; then maybe we won’t limit the next generation.” The children, by now, have grown up to make their own resolutions.
But politics is certainly not the focus of these stories—the true resolution is children overcoming trauma and growing up to thrive. In the end, Jasmine comforts herself and her kids by noting that they had “moments.” Resolutions takes those moments and gradually resolves them into something healing, a saga of individual and family survival. Life doesn’t always offer the solutions of literature, but in these stories Jen Knox does suggest hope, and gives us memorable, hard-working, and courageous models to follow.
Story Circle Book Reviews thanks Susan Schoch for this review.
June 27, 2020
When I started this,I thought the missing daughter was going to be the star of the show,mainly due to her absence.
But second child Molly Mae stepped firmly into that role,as she held the family together.
The whole thing was full of family tension,sibling love and crazy mother.
It came as no surprise that Jasmine had mental health issues,and really was trying to do her best for her kids.
Quite the emotional read.
But second child Molly Mae stepped firmly into that role,as she held the family together.
The whole thing was full of family tension,sibling love and crazy mother.
It came as no surprise that Jasmine had mental health issues,and really was trying to do her best for her kids.
Quite the emotional read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 15, 2021
Jen Knox has a writing style that is both stark and lush. This book captures the journey of a family that is both broken and united. Each member tries to find their way in the world, helping and hurting one another as they go. It is an entrancing tale.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews