Boondocking is a family's journey into parts unknown. In the RV world, "boondocking" means setting up camp in an uncharted area-letting go of your plan and making your way on resourcefulness, wits, and emotional resolve. Which is exactly what Sylvia and Clinton Vaeth do to cope with the tragedy of losing their only daughter at the hands of her husband. The Vaeths give up the comforts of suburban retirement and criss-cross the United States with their baby granddaughter, Rita, in tow. They start a new life along America's backroads, at once assuaging their own grief, as well as trying to protect Rita from knowing the truth about her father. But no matter how far they travel, his presence is never that far behind. Through the peaks and valleys of the American landscape, this family must come to terms with itself, and its own redemption. Through evocative yet accessible prose, Tricia Bauer's debut novel will surprise with its fresh insight.
Tricia Bauer was born and grew up in Baltimore. She began writing as a young girl and later studied poetry before turning to fiction writing. Tricia has written for newspapers and magazines, and held editorial and marketing jobs with different children's book publishers. Her stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies throughout the U.S., and her travel features have been published in The New York Times and International Herald Tribune.
Her first book, Working Women and Other Stories, was published in 1995 to critical acclaim. Boondocking was first published in hardcover in 1997, and was selected for the Discover Great New Writers program and named one of Library Journal's Best First Novels. Hollywood & Hardwood, her second novel, was published in the spring of 1999, and Shelterbelt followed in the fall of 2000.
Tricia was awarded the first annual FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize for her novel Father Flashes, which will be published in March 2011 by Fiction Collective Two, an imprint of University of Alabama Press.
She lives in Connecticut with her husband, playwright Bill Bozzone, and their daughter Lia.
www.triciabauer.com
