by Lesley Kagen
Praise for the Novels of Lesley Kagen
The Resurrection of Tess Blessing
“How wonderful it is to spend time inside Lesley Kagen’s creative mind. In The Resurrection of Tess Blessing, Kagen deftly illustrates her gift for blending the serious and the funny, the light and the dark. With a touch of magical realism, she once again creates a story that’s as hopeful as it is poignant. As a reader, I feel safe in her hands.”
Diane Chamberlain, international bestselling author of Necessary Lies
“Kagen’s talent shines in this wholly original and richly imagined story where unbearable heartache is softened with humor and a touch of magic.”
Beth Hoffman, New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Me
“Read The Resurrection of Tess Blessing, but don’t read it in public because it’ll yank the emotions out of you. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and by the end you’ll be Tess Blessing’s best friend.”
Cathy Lamb, bestselling author of What I Remember Most
“The Resurrection of Tess Blessing is Lesley Kagen at her finest, magically weaving together a tale of poignant regrets, powerful aspirations, and forgotten dreams through Tess, a woman who is really a bit of each of us. By traveling this journey with Tess we are shaken, uplifted, and transformed.”
Pam Jenoff, bestselling author of The Winter Guest
“Confronting her own mortality, Tess Blessing, a lifelong list maker tackles the only to-do list that matters: healing fractured relationships, and empowering the children she fears she will leave behind. Poignant, funny, and searingly wise, The Resurrection of Tess Blessing will stay with you long after you turn the last page.”
Patry Francis, bestselling author of The Orphans of Race Point
“The Resurrection of Tess Blessing is helmed by the most interesting narrator I've read in ages. She and her gifted author, Lesley Kagen, lead us through heartbreaking, humorous, compassionate twists and turns until we find ourselves on the other side, wiser but also, appropriately, resurrected and blessed. It is a journey I was delighted to take.”
Laurie Frankel, bestselling author of Goodbye for Now
“I was hooked from the get go. Tess Blessing’s story is quietly inspiring. With faith, hope, grace, and humor, she shows us how to keep moving forward in the face of fear, uncertainty, and pain…put one foot in front of the other and call in your oldest friend.”
Julia Pandl, bestselling author of Memoir of the Sunday Brunch
The Undertaking of Tess
“A tender yet big-hearted coming-of-age story filled with heartbreak, secrets, and humorous observations of the convoluted adult world through which two young sisters must navigate.”
Beth Hoffman, New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Me
“Heart-rending, yet humorous and filled with hope, The Undertaking of Tess is a rare treat from an author who truly knows how to create unforgettable characters. Readers who loved Kagen’s Whistling in the Dark will adore Tess and Birdie in this delightful novella.”
Sandra Kring, author of the national bestseller The Book of Bright Ideas
“A bittersweet coming-of-age-in-the-fifties story that'll have you crying one minute and laughing out loud the next. Kagen's ability to capture children's deepest emotions never fails to impress."
Bonnie Shimko, award-winning author of The Private Thoughts of Amelia E. Rye
Good Graces
“Good Graces deftly dwells in ’60s Milwaukee. Through her preteen narrator, Sally O’Malley, [Kagen] evokes the joys, sorrows, and complexities of growing up.”
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Kagen does a remarkable job of balancing the goofiness of being an eleven-year-old with the sinister plot elements, creating a suspenseful yarn that still retains an air of genuine innocence.”
Publishers Weekly
“For all the praise garnered for Whistling in the Dark, Good Graces more than lives up to its predecessor.”
School Library Journal
“A beautifully written story…. You will weep for and cheer on the O’Malley sisters…[and] immediately miss them once the last page is turned.”
Heather Gudenkauf, New York Times bestselling author of Little Mercies
“Moving, funny, and full of unexpected delights…. Kagen crafts a gorgeous page-turner about love, loss, and loyalty, all told in the sparkling voices of two extraordinary sisters.”
Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You
Tomorrow River
Winner of the Wisconsin Library Association Outstanding Achievement Award
“[A] stellar third novel…. Kagen not only delivers a spellbinding story but also takes a deep look into the mores, values, and shams of a small Southern community in an era of change.”
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The first-person narration is chirpy, determined, and upbeat…. Shenny steals the show with her brave, funny, and often disturbing patter as she tries to rescue herself and her sister from problems she won’t acknowledge.”
Mystery Scene Magazine
“Tomorrow River…[and] the charming genuine voice of Shenny…is impossible to resist.”
Milwaukee Magazine
“An excellent, moving story, very well written, and one that will linger in your thoughts long after you’ve finished it.”
Historical Novels Review
“This book is packed with warmth, wit, intelligence, images savory enough to taste—and deep dark places that are all the more terrible for being surrounded by so much brightness.”
Tana French, New York Times bestselling author of Broken Harbor
Land of a Hundred Wonders
A Great Lakes Book Award Nominee
“Kagen’s winsome second novel offers laughter and bittersweet sighs.”
Publishers Weekly
“A truly enjoyable read from cover to cover…. Miss Kagen’s moving portrayal of a unique woman finding her way in a time of change will touch your heart.”
Garth Stein, New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain
“I’ve been a Lesley Kagen fan ever since I read her beautifully rendered debut, Whistling in the Dark. Set against the backdrop of the small-town South of the 1970s, Land of a Hundred Wonders is by turns sensitive and rowdy, peopled with larger-than-life characters who are sure to make their own tender path into your heart.”
Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Someone Else’s Love Story
“Gibby hooks the audience from the onset and keeps our empathy throughout…. Her commentary along with a strong supporting cast make for a delightful historical regional investigative tale. [Gibby] is a “shoe-in” to gain reader admiration for her can-do lifestyle.”
The Mystery Gazette
“Lesley Kagen has crafted a story that is poignant, compelling, hilarious, real, and absolutely lovely.”
Kris Radish, author of Gravel on the Side of the Road
Whistling in the Dark
The Midwest Booksellers Choice Award Winner
“Kagen’s debut novel sparkles with charm thanks to ten-year-old narrator Sally O’Malley, who draws readers into the story of her momentous summer in 1959. The author has an uncanny ability to visualize the world as seen by a precocious child in this unforgettable book.”
Romantic Times Top Pick
“Innocently wise and ultimately captivating.”
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“I loved Whistling in the Dark. Living with the O’Malley sisters for the summer is an experience that no one will forget.”
Flamingnet TOP CHOICE Award
“One of the summer�
�s hot reads.”
The Chicago Tribune
“The plot is a humdinger…a certifiable grade-A summer read.”
The Capital Times
“The loss of innocence can be as dramatic as the loss of a parent or the discovery that what’s perceived to be the truth can actually be a big fat lie, as shown in Kagen’s compassionate debut, a coming-of-age thriller set in Milwaukee during the summer of 1959.”
Publishers Weekly
“Bittersweet and beautifully rendered, Whistling in the Dark is the story of two young sisters and a summer jam-packed with disillusionment and discovery. With the unrelenting optimism that only children could bring…these girls triumph. So does Kagen. Whistling in the Dark shines. Don’t miss it.”
Sara Gruen, New York Times bestselling author of Water for Elephants
“Delightful…gritty and smart, profane and poetic.”
Milwaukee Magazine
The Resurrection of Tess Blessing
By
LESLEY KAGEN
COPYRIGHT © 2014 BY LESLEY KAGEN
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
Published by SparkPress, a BookSparks imprint,
A division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC
Tempe, Arizona, USA, 85281
www.sparkpointstudio.com
All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.
Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN: 978-1-940716-55-8 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-940716-56-5 (e-book)
Cover design © Julie Metz, Ltd./metzdesign.com
Cover photo © Arcangel Images at arcangel.com
Author photo by Megan McCormick/Shoot the Moon Photography
Formatting by Polgarus Studio
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
For my eternally loved son, Riley
“Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control…we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”
— Albert Einstein
“It is the nature of grace always to fill spaces that have been empty.”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever.”
— Winnie the Pooh, Alan Alexander Milne
Table of Contents
Praise for the Novels of Lesley Kagen
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
While Others Leave Her Side, I Never Will
A Passed Life
Got Something in My Pocket
Hard to Swallow
Down on Her Knees
Erroneous Assumptions
Not-Such Devoted Sisters
Bellowing
Deceased and Desisted
Bottoms Up
Freaks
You Catch My Drift?
Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself
Sisterland
How Low Can You Go?
A Few Words on the Brink of Death
A Reunion
Love Is a Tree with Many Limbs from Which to Hang One’s Self
Shiver Me Timbers
Tempus Does Not Fugit
A Greater Margin of Safety
What a Trooper
An Encore Performance
Four Pairs of Red Wax Lips, The Really Big Ones
The Horse Is Out of the Barn
Tattooed
Aloha Means Hello and Goodbye
What If I Start Yodeling?
Bad Timing
Back to the Future
Unearthing
The Edge
Loose Lips Sink Ships
I Know a Dark, Secluded Place
P.S.
Acknowledgments
Biography of the Author Lesley Kagen
Also by Lesley Kagen
About SparkPress
While Others Leave Her Side, I Never Will
My Tess is a sly one. Quite the little actress. When called upon to do so, she can appear to be a concerned citizen…a capable mother…the confident wife of the president of the Chamber of Commerce. Appearing ordinary is one of her best talents. As long as nothing unexpected blows up in her face, which, of course, life being the minefield that it is, is about to.
Morning winter sun is streaming through the four-paned kitchen windows that overlook the white picket-fenced backyard of the darling red-brick colonial in Ruby Falls, Wisconsin, population, 5,623. There are three of us gathered around the distressed pine kitchen table that’s been passed down through the Blessing family for generations—forty-nine-year-old, Tess, her lovely eighteen-year-old daughter, Haddie, who has returned to the roost to spend the Christmas holiday, and me, who has always been and always will be, but remains unnamed, for the time being. The man of the house, Will, has already left for the day. He’s busy seating the breakfast bunch at Count Your Blessings, the popular Main Street ’50s-style diner that he inherited from his father upon his passing. Tess’s other child, Henry, a junior in high school, remains upstairs wrapped in his Star Wars sheets. Like most fifteen-year-olds, the boy believes the world revolves around him.
“Just a nibble?” Tess asks her daughter.
When the gifted photographer struggling through her first year at Savannah College of Art and Design turns her nose up at the French toast her desperate mother prepared with her secret ingredient—tears, Tess can barely keep herself from pounding the top of the pine table and asking yet again, “What did I do wrong? How can I make this better? Please…please let me in.” She swallows the questions back because she knows from experience that Haddie’ll only change the subject, at best. Worse, she’ll get angrier than she already is.
Tess sets her gaze out of one of the kitchen windows and locks on the solitary snow angel I watched her create last night while her family remained snug in their beds. Others may leave her side, but I never have, and never will. We are bound together not only in this life, but for all time.
Most of what you think you know about “imaginary friends” is probably inaccurate. We’re a much more complicated lot than the way we’re often portrayed in books, movies, psychological articles, and such. For instance, not once have I heard it mentioned what an important part readiness plays in our relationship. Nor have I seen it noted how we are imbued with whatever qualities our friends need the most, which depends upon at what point in their lives we are called into what is known on our side as, “Service.” The profound spiritual component in our friendship has never been touched upon either. Even the term, “imaginary friend,” is nothing more than a handy phrase a psychiatrist came up with to describe the indescribable and put the inexplicable in its place.
Since Tess has had quite a bit of prior experience with an IF—a nickname we like to call each other sometimes—I’m not anticipating that she’ll put up much of a fuss when the time comes for us to connect again. (At Last.) While I can’t know exactly when that momentous occasion will occur—that’s entirely up to her—I can feel it drawing nearer. Hoped it might happen last night when I was perched on the faded green Adirondack chair under the weeping willow tree in the Blessings’ backyard watching her swish her arms and legs back and forth in the snow. (Wearing just her ancient cows-sipping-café-au-lait-on-the-Champs-Élysées nightie on the chilliest night yet this winter proved that she needs someone to lean on sooner rather than later.)
Because I know every thought and feeling she’s ever had, as Tess sets the French toast Haddie had rejected on the floor next to the family’s beloved golden retriever, Garbo, I can hear her telling herself—I’m gonna do it again tonight
. Not just once, I’ll make a dozen angels.
And on January 17, 1999, after the dawn smudges peach and blue across tomorrow’s horizon, she’ll rise from her bed, slip on her worn-to-the-nub green chenille robe, and pad downstairs to get things going in the kitchen like her world hasn’t cracked wide open and the contents spilled. And before Haddie takes off for an eight-mile run, Tess’ll wish her a perky good morning, offer her a cup of freshly squeezed orange juice, and not mention the life-shattering news she’s about to receive. My friend will put on the smile she keeps close at hand, point out the kitchen window at her newly created flock, and say, “Look! Angels have come by to say halo!” with the hope that her daughter will be tickled by the corny joke she’d thought was hilarious when was she was ten ’cause Tess would do and say just about anything to recapture the closeness of those days.
