As the Great Recession and the foreclosure crisis hit, four close friends who barely made it out of poverty in New York City’s South Bronx, suddenly find themselves caught up in the economic maelstrom. Lena, Zack, Dory, and Stu must reconcile their troubled past with an uncertain future in Beverly Gologorsky’s stunning new novel, a tapestry of working-class life in a world on the brink.
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“What a book! Gologorsky is at her best, weaving a tapestry of the lives of very real people, people whose lives deserve her care, her unsparing eye, and her compassion. Here is a story that cuts to the core of the way things are, and the way they can -- all of a sudden -- become. You heart might be ripped out by this book, but it will get placed back inside with a larger capacity to love and beat on -- what a book, indeed.”—Elizabeth Strout, author of My Name is Lucy Barton and Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge
"I read Every Body Has a Story over the past few summer weeks -- sitting on a bench in Central Park -- and was engulfed in memories of what happened to ordinary Americans 10 years ago when Lehman Brothers folded, the market crashed, recession drilled deep into the marrow of the country, and tens of millions of lives were thrown into turmoil from which many have yet to recover (a factor in Trump’s election). I was on PBS then with my weekly series and caught some of the drama and trauma. Beverly Gologorsky has made real the experience of falling... falling... and landing, like those Thai kids trapped at the bottom of the drop. I grew up with people like that who had been felled by the Great Depression and I kept seeing some of them in the characters in her story. I've also been working on a series about what happened to the families of farmers and workers during the first Gilded Age and, while reading this book, couldn’t get them out of my head. All I'm saying is that Every Body Has a Story may be fiction, but I've not seen more reality in a novel in a long, long time." —Bill Moyers
"Every Body Has a Story is an emotionally taut tale that is also a specific, personal and unbending critique of the system of neoliberal capitalism." —CounterPunch
"EVERY BODY HAS A STORY...is a realistic look into lives many of us view from the fringe, but could easily become ours....What’s so compelling about EVERY BODY HAS A STORY is how unremarkable it is. There’s no hype. These are real people facing their reality the best they can. Gologorsky’s prose and story-telling is pithy, sharp and compassionate. Her ability to connect and put real people on the page is what is remarkable about this novel.This book tells the story that anyone of us could be living, perhaps are living. I would argue it’s hard to read this book without becoming a little bit (more) compassionate. EVERY BODY HAS A STORY tells the story of people constantly tested and on the point of breaking, trying to live their truth the best they can, without any sentimentality." —Cindy Roesal, Book Blog“Gologorsky plumbs the lives of working people in America. Economic crisis can strike suddenly. Families can fall apart and mend again. Love is deep--both powerful and fragile--but never simple. Everybody does have a story, and Gologorsky’s compassion and knowledge of the human heart reveals the unspoken emotional layers in marriage, parenthood, friendship, and in unexpected love. In beautiful and lucid prose, the story of two families caught in some of the most difficult contemporary crosscurrents builds to a crescendo with memorable characters that remain with the reader. A deep and gripping novel until the very last words.”—Jane Lazarre, author of Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons"In prose as tender and historically detailed as Alice McDermott’s, Beverly Gologorsky weaves a tale of two hard-working and endearing couples sent head-over-heels by the sudden economic reversals to which the non-rich are so subject. As much a story about marital and parental love as it is about the precariousness of working class life, this novel makes us fall for each of its characters, even as they make their deeply human mistakes. Timeless and essential, Every Body Has a Story is utterly spellbinding."—Helen Benedict, author of Wolf Season and Sand Queen"Every Body Has a Story is a compelling story of the shattering and rebuilding of home and heart. Gologorsky tells a tale of today’s impaired Americana, where the unthinkable, inescapable, and raw pressures of economically and emotionally strapped life can irrevocably alter relationships, identities, and any semblance of stability. With gripping prose, she provides us a front-row seat in the lives of two families, headed by couples that evolve from carefree to burdened at the hands of fate and high finance." —Nomi Prins, Author of All the Presidents’ Bankers and Collusion
"Far from the headlines of the Ponzi schemes and the bailouts of banks engaged in unethical home mortgage practices, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel, Every Body Hasa Story, takes an impassioned and unflinching look at two couples who have willed themselves out of the dire circumstances of their childhoods, only to become adults facing the realization that the promises and commitments made in their youth have not played out in the lives they’ve actually lived. In prose that is pitch perfect in every detail that matters, Gologorsky gives us characters who are unpredictably truthful and achingly alive, as the bonds of marriage, friendship and between parents and children are tested nearly to the point of breaking. Every Body Has A Story gives voice to the unheralded predicaments and triumphs of Americans living in the real time of here and now." —Wesley Brown, author of Darktown Strutters and Dance of the Infidels
Praise of previous books: The Things We Do to Make It Home (New York Times Notable Book, Los Angeles Times Best Fiction, finalist for Barnes & Nobles Discovery of Great Writers Awards)
“Stunning. . . .Lean and supple, completely persuasive, full of nuanced turns, dead on about how people try to bind and repel each other at the same time.”—New York Times Book Review
Stop Here (an Indie Next Pick and Reader’s Digest Best Indy Novels of the Year) “Gologorsky’s . . . . novel. . . . examines the lives of working-class families impacted by war. . . . The author treats each singular story line with insight, compassion, and no sentimentality.”—Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)