The Talking Stick

"The situation: real women with real and painful problems.
The solution: have friends. Also, magic.
The result: A thoroughly engaging, completely entertaining novel by the great Donna Levin."
--Karen Joy Fowler, PEN/Faulkner award winner, Man Booker award nominee, and New York Times bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club

Four women find humor, truth, romance, and a better path forward by deconstructing memory and emotion--and expose a wannabe cult leader along the way.

Hunter is lost. Her husband left her for Angelica, her former best friend whose new hit memoir is spreading unsavory lies about Hunter. She's unemployed with no prospects, and the San Francisco flea market she's wandering on a weekday is so foggy that she literally doesn't know where she is.

It's only after a helpful visit and a gift from a stranger who appears from the mist that Hunter finds her resolve. She begins a support group for women looking for new beginnings--only to have Angelica start one, too. In the next room over. One that feels very cult-y.

The Talking Stick is the adventure of Hunter and the three women who join her reclamation journey. Together, they reexamine their pasts, explore their grief, addictions, parenting, and marriages, and discover that some of their most-cherished memories are romanticized versions of the truth. Meanwhile, they unearth other memories--memories that challenge how they've been living for years. And, with the help of a lawyer who prefers life on a houseboat to the pretensions of the city, Hunter unravels Angelica's scheme.

The Talking Stick is a fast-paced dramedy set in the Bay Area, told with the characteristic humor of Donna Levin, an author whom Kirkus called "A witty, modern voice" and the Los Angeles Times deemed "a novelist to keep high on your reading list."


Author: Donna Levin
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 04/23/2024
Pages: 408
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.40lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.30w x 1.70d
ISBN: 9781648210310


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 06/01/2024

About the Author
Donna Levin is the author of four acclaimed novels, Extraordinary Means, California Street, There's More Than One Way Home, and He Could Be Another Bill Gates. She has also written two books on the craft of writing: Get That Novel Started and Get That Novel Written. Her work is included at Boston University, in the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, and in the California State Library's collection of California novels. She lives in San Francisco.