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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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micahperks.com

WHAT BECOMES US

Micah Perks

A modern-day pioneer in search of a new life, pregnant Evie leaves her abusive husband and lands in a close-knit community divided by local colonial history - a story that goes deep to the roots of the American conscience.
Following a near fatal accident, Evie, a mild-mannered, pregnant school teacher, abandons her controlling husband and flees Santa Cruz, California for the wilds of western New York. She rents a farm house on a dead end road in a seemingly ideal, multi-cultural community. When she begins teaching at the local high school, she becomes obsessed with an assigned book, The Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson. This early American classic is the first book written by a woman in the Americas and details Rowlandson's harrowing captivity during King Philip's War in the seventeenth century.

As Mary Rowlandson's insatiable hunger begins to fill Evie's dreams, Evie wonders if she may actually be haunted. At the same time, Evie becomes obsessed with her neighbor, a married Chilean immigrant. As she grows more pregnant, her desires/hunger grows out of control, and threaten to destroy her adopted community.

Micah Perks is the author of a novel, We Are Gathered Here, a memoir, Pagan Time, and a long personal essay from Shebooks, Alone In The Woods. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Epoch, Zyzzyva, Tin House, The Toast, OZY and The Rumpus, amongst many journals and anthologies. She has won an NEA, five Pushcart Prize nominations, and the New Guard Machigonne 2014 Fiction Prize. She received her BA and MFA from Cornell University and now lives with her family in Santa Cruz where she co-directs the creative writing program at UCSC.
Available products
Book

Published 2016-10-04 by Outpost19

Book

Published 2016-10-04 by Outpost19

Comments

Micah Perk's wonderful and surprising new novel proves that the life of a small-town schoolteacher can be by turns comic, dramatic, joyful, and violent.

Micah Perks is one of the most radiantly original writers around. What Becomes Us, exhilarating and terrifying, is a novel I love for its wild beauty, its offbeat inventiveness, its effervescent language, and the artfulness with which it has been shaped. This is a brilliant novel.

It’s funny and complex and layered; as someone who is interested in female characters and female desire in narratives, and in pregnancy and birth in literature, I found it fascinating.

a woman's manifesto...a tightly woven story that is as fanciful as it is grimly real.

Micah Perks' book has everything a reader could hope for -- her language is lively, her characters appealing. Set in a storied landscape, with themes of independence and community. Romance! History! Food! Plus a tale to tell and some surprising people to tell it. There is real magic here. Micah magic! Completely original, completely delightful.

I've been obsessed with Mary Rowlandson for 20 years, and was delighted to find that Micah Perks writes about her with fireworks. This is a warm, wild, hilarious, eccentric and moving book.