The Story of Miriam's Well
In this modern day retelling of the Exodus, Miriam wanders the political and spiritual desert of a changing America, torn between her roots as the Jewish daughter of a Black father and white mother, her yearning for home, and her brothers, Aaron, a successful New York City attorney, and Moses, an autistic artist living in Kansas. An astonishing cook and singer, Miriam has a knack for showing up to feed and help people at landmark events, including People's Park during the Summer of Love, the Wounded Knee encampment in South Dakota, the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco, the Oklahoma City terrorist attack, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina. As she seeks the promised land, she shows her people, and eventually herself, how to turn the chaos and despair of our times into music, meals, and miracles.
The novel also includes over 35 pages of real recipes from the fictional cooking and baking Miriam does throughout the book, including delicious delights by Nancy O'Connor's The Rolling Prairie Cookbook, Jayni and Frank Carey's The New Kansas Cookbook, Janet Majure's Recipes Worth Sharing, and Meghan Heriford of the Ladybird Diner in Lawrence, Kansas.
Why a Book Tour Campaign
Like most writers, I've been pretty much funding my own book tours for many years, which has limited my travel and reach. I'm thrilled to be working with Ice Cube Press, publishing the finest of Midwestern writers for many years, which is giving the book all it needs in terms of great design, wide distribution, and a fabulously hard-working publisher, Steve Semken. Like most presses, this one doesn't have resources for a book tour. So I'm turning to you to help me visit many communities (events in the works or plans for Kansas, Missouri, Vermont, Wisconsin, Arizona, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Florida, Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and more). In return, you can get your own copy of Miriam's Well or many other vivid perks.
What Miriam's Well Needs & What You Get
The campaign goal of $4,900 will give this novel legs to reach more readers in more communities by covering reasonable costs of travel (watch out, I could be sleeping on your couch soon!). Here's what the funds will go for:
- Travel expenses for in-person readings at libraries, community hubs, bookstores, synagogues, and colleges, plus writing workshops related to the novel throughout the country.
- Connecting with book clubs and other reading communities across the country to offer video-conference visits at their convenience.
- Sharing the book more widely through social media and printed materials.
- Filming short videos and recording podcasts of sample readings, questions and answers about the book, and the mythical and contemporary dimensions of this story.
My part is putting in lots of time and love, and also paying my way for a share of the travel expenses.
What you get, beyond of the satisfaction of helping a workaday writer fulfill one of her dreams, are signed copies of Miriam's Well for you and friends or family, baskets of books, in-person workshops and readings, and poems or even a song written just for you or a beloved.
Early Reviews
"Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg's retelling of Exodus is a sprawling tapestry, woven of all the threads of a modern-day Miriam's ancestors, and her own present and future. From the Badagry Point of No Return and a sukkah in the Sinai Desert to a series of camps, communes, and cafes all across America, Miriam's Well delves into the mystery of how we find our place in the world, within our families, even within ourselves." ~ Bryn Greenwood, New York Times bestselling author of All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
"I fell in love with Miriam’s wisdom and her sweet engagements with the people she meets along her lush and vibrant travels. I was plunged to the depths of her nightmares, soared with her song, and emerged blessed to have made the journey with her. ~ Jocelyn Cullity, author of Amah & the Silk-Winged Pigeons
"Miriam’s Well is truly a hearty feast and a song of life’s bounty, of its “fragile miracle,” of its sorrows and its cycling, its joy, its mystery, its sorrows, its journeying. The vibrantly moving and compelling storytelling is immediate, intimate, and resounding; bringing us into a complex weaving of tales, told and untold, from the Biblical epic to the painful legacy of United States, which frame the story of one brave woman with an inexhaustible well of caring." ~ Gale Jackson, author of Put Your Hands on Your Hips and Act Like a Woman: Song, Dance, Black History and Poetics in Performance
"Miriam’s Well is a page-turner that gently pulls the reader into the heroine’s quest. A compelling writer, Mirriam-Goldberg’s Miriam’s Well captures a quintessential American story, its multitude of nations, of immigrants and indigenes, in the quest towards a meaningful national identity." ~ Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka, Professor of Theatre, and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, University of Kansas
See more as they come in here.
Risks & Challenges
Travel and sharing a book even from home takes time and thoughtful planning. I also have the 20/20 hindsight vision of doing book tours from writing or editing over 20 other books. I have spent the last year researching how to best reach people who would appreciate and find meaning in this novel. To this end, I'm aiming the tour as much as possible toward events where I can meet readers directly as well as readings in independent book stores, which I'm committed to support however I can. I've also developed plans for reaching people from afar because, like many of you, there's only so much travel I can do without ending up sick and exhausted on my recliner. This plan includes video-conferencing into book groups, and widely sharing podcasts and videos. Most of all, this book tour is a way to help bring greater meaning to all our lives through exploring who we are and what our callings are through the lens of the novel.
Other Ways You Can Help
I know that not everyone has some extra cash to contribute, and also, there are pressing issues we all need and want to support. If you're not able to chip in, please share this campaign via Facebook, Twitter, and the Indiegogo tools (buttons not to the pink "back it" button in the upper right-hand corner). Good wishes also happily accepted.