Beth Kephart

"Juno" meets "Under the Tuscan Sun" It's senior year, and while Kenzie should be looking forward to prom and starting college in the fall, she discovers she's pregnant. Her determination to keep her baby is something her boyfriend and mother do not understand. So she is sent to Spain, where she will live out her pregnancy, and her baby will be adopted by a Spanish couple. No one will ever know. Alone and resentful in a foreign country, Kenzie is at first sullen and difficult. But as she gets to know Estela, the stubborn old cook, and Esteban, the mysterious young man who cares for the horses, she begins to open her eyes, and her heart, to the beauty that is all around her, and inside her. Kenzie realizes she has some serious choices to make--choices about life, love, and home. Lyrically told in a way that makes the heat, the colors, and the smells of Spain feel alive, "Small Damages" is a feast for the heart and the soul, and a coming-of-age novel not easily forgotten.

Flavored by the oddities of historic personalities and facts, Dr. Radway’s Sarsaparilla Resolvent is set in Bush Hill, Philadelphia, 1871-home to the Baldwin Locomotive Works and a massive, gothic prison. Acclaimed writer Beth Kephart captures the rhythms and smells of an extraordinary era as William Quinn and his Ma, Essie, grapple with life among terrible accidents, miraculous escapes, and shams masquerading as truth.

Zenobia a former industry giant that is bedeviled by paralyzing hierarchies, grossly inadequate communications, and distrust--is a broken place. Zenobia is a fortress doomed to collapse upon itself. Enter Moira, who has responded to a help wanted ad and seeks to find a given office, Room 133A. As she moves through the Zenobian maze, Moira makes some surprising discoveries about the power of teamwork, the role of the imagination, and the qualities that define true leaders. Her story is complemented and deepened by the story of a long-time Zenobia employee named Gallagher, the man who issued the help wanted ad and who watches, and comments, as Moira makes her way to the ever-elusive Room 133A. This unusual book will move readers to take a fresh and fearless look at their own organizations and imagine what they could be, always keeping in mind that, as the want ad Moira answers puts it, "creative persistence a prerequisite."

From acclaimed writer Beth Kephart, author of A Slant of Sun, comes a short, imaginative telling of the life of the Schuylkill River, which has served as the source of Philadelphia's water, power, industry, and beauty for the city's entire life. Before that, it fed the indigenous people who preceded William Penn, and has since time immemorial shape our region.

Kids today seem to be under more competitive pressure than ever, while studies show that reading, writing, and the arts in schools are suffering. Is there any place for imagination in kids' lives anymore? In a dog-eat-dog world, why dream things that aren't there? In gorgeous prose and through personal stories, Beth Kephart resoundingly affirms the imagination as the heart of our ability to empathize with others, to appreciate the world, and to envision possibilities for the future. The star of her story is once again her son, Jeremy (as in her National Book Award-nominated A Slant of Sun), now fourteen years old—a child who at first resists storytelling, preferring more objective and orderly pursuits, but later leads a neighborhood book club/writing group and aspires to follow Steven Spielberg into moviemaking. Embedded in the text and appendices are examples of how to inspire children to read, write, and dream.

For Beth Kephart's son, the diagnosis was pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified--a broad spectrum of difficulties, including autistic features. As the author and her husband discover, all that label really means is that their son Jeremy is different in a million wonderful ways, and also different in ways that need our help. In intimate, incandescent prose, Kephart shares the painful and inspiring experience of loving a child whose special needs bring tremendous frustration and incalculable rewards. What, in the end, are you fighting for: Normal? Kephart asks. Is normal possible? Can it be defined? . . . And is normal superior to what the child inherently is, to what he aspires to, fights to become, every second of his day? With the help of passionate parental involvement and the kindness of a few open hearts, Jeremy slowly emerges from a world of obsessive play rituals, atypical language constructions, endless pacing, and lonely frustrations. Triumphantly, he begins to engage others, describe his thoughts and passions, build essential friendships. Ultimately this is a story of the shallowness of medical labels compared to a child's courage and a mother's love, of which Kephart writes, Nothing erodes it. It is not sand on a beach. It is the nuclear heart of things--hard as the rock of this earth.