Rash: A Memoir
Writer Lisa Kusel, while living comfortably in her California home, feels an unsettling lack of personal contentment. When she sees a job posting for a new international school in Bali, she convinces her schoolteacher husband Victor to apply.
Six weeks after his interview, Lisa, Victor, and their six-year-old daughter, Loy, move halfway around the world to paradise. But instead of luxuriating in ocean breezes, renewed passion, and first-rate schooling, what Lisa and her family find are burning corpses, biting ants, and a millionaire founder who cares more about selling bamboo furniture than educating young minds. Not to mention Lisa’s fear that one morning she might see the Dengue Fever rash on her young daughter.
Rash is an unfiltered, sharply-written memoir about a woman who goes looking for happiness on the Island of the Gods, and nearly destroys her marriage in the process. For anyone who has ever dreamed of starting over in an exotic locale, this is a poignant reminder that no matter where you go, there you are.
Hat Trick: A Novel
Mona and Hannah were best friends in high school, but they let their friendship slip away in the aftermath of a complicated love triangle with Peter, a man ten years older. Now in their thirties, Mona is a Hollywood movie producer and Hannah imports African goods for her store on the Northern California coast. In an ironic twist of fate, the two women and Peter cross paths again on the exotic island of Zanzibar.
When they meet again, the bonds of love, guilt, and responsibility that kept them tied to one another are brought to the surface. Told in alternating voices and taking readers from California to New York to East Africa, Hat Trick is the richly compelling story of three people reunited — or forever divided.
Other Fish in the Sea: Stories
Elly Fisher is searching for her place in the world and for the love of her life. Leading us through these 10 interconnected stories, Elly links one intimate tale to the next as she drifts through Europe, sleeps with a married man, tangles with a roommate from hell, creates a stir on a cattle ranch in Colorado, answers singles ads from a Seattle newspaper, and more.
Clever and original, Kusel offers readers a kaleidoscopic perspective of a young woman’s life, told from many points of view and in the voices of several related characters. Each of the stories build upon one another to create an effect like that of a novel. What shines through is Elly’s delightfully unique journey of self-discovery. Other Fish in the Sea is an intricate, involving, disarmingly funny, and powerfully personal work, in the tradition of Alice Munro and Lorrie Moore.