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Cancelled Hardcover – January 1, 2008

by Julia Sweeney (Author)

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The former star of Saturday Night Live debuts as a writer and delivers a memoir with heart and humor that tells how she lost her faith, re-created her life, and found the home she had been looking for with an adopted child named Mulan

Nearing forty, Julia Sweeney realized that something had to give—like now, please. Raised seriously Catholic, she had always believed that God (or a deceased nun who recalled her fondly) would see how hard she’d been trying and come through with the picket-fence thing—a husband and a truckload of kids that she could instill with her family’s neuroses. Yet perhaps, Sweeney thought, she had offended God. (Not to mention the nuns.) She was a successful actress and TV writer (Sex and the City), but suddenly she was only playing mothers—a role she never got in real life. And dating-wise, she’d been out there slugging, but love had never knocked, and suddenly she felt scared, sad, alone, and, well . . . older.

After a few couch-bound months, seeking comfort from her new friends on the Food Channel, she knew she was facing some sort of serious personal crisis. So she got off the couch. And she went back to church—only to realize that maybe God wasn’t going to throw down the picket fence. And maybe—could she even say it?—there was no God taking note of her good deeds and watching out for her. Maybe she was going to have to rethink things, and get a new dream that didn’t look at all like what she’d been raised to expect.

That is only the beginning of the story of how Julia Sweeney found a home (no fence, no prince, no God) with a child she traveled across the world to meet.

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Henry Holt and Co.
Publication date

January 1, 2008
Dimensions

7.26 x 0.87 x 9.38 inches
ISBN-10

0805075674
ISBN-13

978-0805075670
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About the Author

Julia Sweeney, who starred on Saturday Night Live for five years, has recently written and performed in a new stage show, Letting Go of God, which debuted in Los Angeles to rave reviews. In addition to her work as an actress in movies and on TV, she was a writing consultant on Sex and the City for its last three seasons. Her stage show God Said Ha appeared on Broadway and was filmed by Miramax. Off-Broadway and in Los Angeles, she appeared in In the Family Way. Born in Spokane, Washington, she now lives in
Los Angeles with her daughter.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Forty. So I was forty. When I was a kid my dad used to sit on the end of my bed and we would figure out how old everyone would be when I was various ages. The oldest age we ever got to for me was forty; that’s when we stopped because it was basically impossible to think of me older than that.

I imagined myself wearing a lot of tweeds and having long brown hair and high cheekbones and a crooked nose and probably working at a library. My kids would be in college by then and my husband would look a little like Jimmy
Stewart did in Anatomy of a Murder and he would come out to the porch where I’d be knitting and say, “The kids called from college, they say Happy Birthday.”

But here I was at forty, single and childless. In the wind, I could almost hear God laughing at how differently everything turned out. On the trip I had flirted with two hiking guides, both of whom were more than ten years younger than me. Was this what I was becoming? The female Michael Jackson of Leisure Travel? I shuddered. I had been raised to have a home. And now it was my birthday and the big news that came flooding in with a new clarity was this: it wasn’t going to happen. The family, the picket fence, the husband, the children. It had eluded me, I had failed and there was no going back.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Henry Holt and Co. (January 1, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0805075674
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0805075670
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.26 x 0.87 x 9.38 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #24,101,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #57,181 in Actor & Entertainer Biographies
- #92,391 in Women's Biographies
- #291,977 in Memoirs (Books)

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Joseph P. Hunt

was release delayed ?

Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2007

I never received this book. was the release date delayed ?