Broken for You

By Stephanie Kallos

"Well-crafted plotting and crackling wit make this debut novel by Seattle author Kallos a delight to read and a memory to savor." -Booklist

List Price: $24.00

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.23 x 9.38 x 6.38
• Publisher: Grove Press; (September 9, 2004)
• ISBN: 0802117791

Book Description

With a riotous energy that recalls the works of John Irving and Anne Tyler, Broken for You is a debut novel of infinite charm and tremendous heart that explores the risks and rewards of human connection, and the hidden strength behind things that only seem fragile. When we meet septuagenarian Margaret Hughes, she is living alone in a mansion in Seattle with only a massive collection of valuable antiques for company.

Enter Wanda Schultz, a young woman with a broken heart who has come west to search for her wayward boyfriend. Both women are guarding dark secrets and have spent many years building up protective armor against the outside world. But as the two begin their tentative dance of friendship, the armor begins to fall away and Margaret opens her house to Wanda.

Along the way, a famous mosaic artist is born, a Holocaust survivor is reunited with her long-lost tea set, and a sad-eyed drifter finds his long-lost daughter. Funny, heartbreaking, and alive with a potpourri of eccentric and irresistible characters, Broken for You is a testament to the saving graces of surrogate families, and shows how far the tiniest repair jobs can go in righting the world's wrongs.

From the Inside Flap

"Stephanie Kallos's lovely and heartfelt first novel is a gift. A story of broken hearts and broken promises, it is also the story of the ways we put things back together—messily, beautifully, and ultimately triumphantly. Kallos is a writer to watch, and one who, mercifully, still believes in happy endings." —Sheri Holman, author of The Dress Lodger and The Mammoth Cheese