An aspiring piano student at an exclusive Baltimore conservatory finds her musical education mirroring pivotal developments in her personal life and influenced by the experiences of her prestigious classmates. A first novel. 10,000 first printing.
(Author Photograph by Dennis Eamon Young). Paula Huston, the eldest of five children, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1952. Her Norwegian Lutheran family moved to California when she was only two; she grew up in Long Beach, married at nineteen, and relocated to San Luis Obispo county on the Central Coast in her early twenties. About the time her children, Andrea and John, were born, she began writing short stories; in her early thirties, she divorced and spent several years as a single working mother, which convinced her that she really needed to complete her college education. After remarrying and becoming a stepmother to Kelly and Greta, she returned to school for a B.A. in English, and went on for a Masters in English and American Literature while continuing to write and publish fiction.
She began teaching at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo after completing the Master's degree. While still matriculating, she took a class in ethics that helped spur a return to the Christianity she had abandoned years before. This time, however, she came back to the church as a Catholic, and in the process, shifted to writing spiritual non-fiction. Eventually, she became a Camaldolese Benedictine oblate, a lay associate of a contemplative Catholic hermitage on the Big Sur coast, which means she does her best to live by two ancient rules written primarily for monks and hermits: the Rule of St. Benedict and the Brief Rule of St. Romuald of Ravenna, Italian founder of the Camaldolese. For many years, she and her husband Mike have lived on four acres in the country where, in the spirit of St. Benedict, they produce much of the food they eat, including fruits, vegetables, olive oil, eggs, honey, and wine. She has two small and beloved grandsons, and is currently anticipating the birth of yet another little boy this fall.
Huston is the author of four books and a co-editor and contributing essayist for a fifth, SIGNATURES OF GRACE: CATHOLIC WRITERS ON THE SACRAMENTS. Her essays and short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines over the years, including AMERICAN SHORT FICTION, STORY, NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, IMAGE, AMERICA, THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY, and GEEZ. She is a National Endowment of the Arts Fellow in Creative Writing, and a founder and faculty member for a low-residency California State University Consortium Master of Fine Arts program in fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry. Her work has been honored several times by BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES and will appear in BEST SPIRITUAL WRITING OF 2010. She has taught at the Glen Workshop at St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and is a frequent retreat leader and speaker at churches and campuses around the country.
