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The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew is a finalist in Foreword Reviews IndieFab Book of the Year Award<div>Gentile reader, and you, Jews, come too. Follow Sue William Silverman, a one-woman cultural mash-up, on her exploration of identity among the mishmash of American idols and ideals that confuse most of us or should. Pat Boone is our first stop. Now a Tea Party darling, Boone once shone as a squeaky-clean pop music icon of normality, an antidote for Silverman s own confusing and dangerous home, where being a Jew in a Christian school wasn t easy, and being the daughter of the Anti-Boone was unspeakable. And yet somehow Silverman found her way, a gefilte fish swimming upstream, and found her voice, which in this searching, bracing, hilarious, and moving book tries to make sense of that most troubling American condition: belonging, but to what?Picking apricots on a kibbutz, tramping cross-country in a loathed Volkswagen camper, appearing in a made-for-television version of her own life: Silverman is a bobby-soxer, a baby boomer, a hippy, a lefty, and a rebel with something to say to those of us most of us still wondering what to make of ourselves.



About the Author

Sue William Silverman

Sue William Silverman's new book is "How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences." Many are haunted and obsessed by their own eventual deaths, but perhaps no one as much as Sue. This thematically linked collection of essays charts Silverman's attempt to confront her fears of that ultimate unknown. (University of Nebraska Press, American Lives Series) .Her previous memoir-in-essays is "The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew." The book describes Sue's search for authentic self-identity - a search complicated by her conflicted feelings toward Judaism and her various efforts to "pass" as Christian. At the heart of this journey are three separate encounters with 1960s pop-music icon, turned Christian provocateur, Pat Boone, who plays a pivotal role in her desire to belong to the dominant culture. It is published with the University of Nebraska Press as part of their American Lives Series, edited by Tobias Wolff.An earlier memoir is "Love Sick: One Woman's Journey through Sexual Addiction" (W. W. Norton) , which is also a Lifetime Television original movie. During the filming, Sue visited the set and makes a cameo appearance in the movie! Her first memoir, "Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You" (University of Georgia Press) , won the AWP award series in creative nonfiction. Her two poetry collections are "If the Girl Never Learns" and "Hieroglyphics in Neon." Sue's book on craft is "Fearless Confessions: A Writer's Guide to Memoir," which won Honorable Mention in "ForeWord Review's" book of the year award. Check out the photos of Sue on this page! In one she is with Pat Boone after one of his concerts. In another, she stands beside the actress Sally Pressman, who portrays Sue in the movie "Love Sick." And another from the movie set shows Sue standing outside her movie trailer! There is also a photo of Sue teaching a workshop in creative nonfiction. As a professional speaker, Sue has appeared on such television programs as The View, Anderson Cooper-360, and CNN-Headline News. She teaches in the low-residency MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Sue believes we all have a story to tell, that all our voices are important, and encourages others to write their life narratives, too.Her partner is the poet Marc Sheehan, and they have two cats, Bijou and Siobahn. For more information and photos of Sue, please visit www.SueWilliamSilverman.com.



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