RIDING THE MEMOIR WAVE: Drinking the Rain, Between Urban and Wild, Circling Back Home, Yellowstone Has Teeth, A Bushel's Worth, and More
Nine years ago my New York agent circulated to four different publishing houses a 20-page memoir proposal for Sweetwater: A Mountain Cabin, a Life Unfolding, still a work-in-progress. Despite accolades for my first memoir, three of the houses passed on the project with cordial letters that addressed its strengths and shortcomings. The fourth pass came from the executive editor at Viking Penguin. “This reminded me of a book I published..." wrote the editor, " Drinking the Rain by Alix Kates Shulman, the story of a summer she spent alone at a cabin in Maine as she turned fifty and was experiencing midlife and marriage crises. I love that book… Shulman is an amazing writer, and I’m afraid for me Lambert’s writing did not hold up in comparison…” Photo of Shulman by Marion Ettlinger. I was devastated. Once I picked myself up off the floor (which took days), I ordered a copy of Drinking the Rain , flipped through the pages when it arrived, tho...