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Lee Martin

Born: 1955 in Lawrenceville, Illinois
Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: Lee was born in Lawrenceville, Illinois and attended Eastern Illinois University in Charleston. He lived in Illinois from 1955 through 1979. His memoirs, ''From Our House'' and ''Turning Bones'', feature Illinois settings.

Biography: Martin is the award-winning author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist ''The Bright Forever''; a novel, ''Quakertown''; a short story collection, ''The Least You Need to Know''; and two acclaimed memoirs, ''From Our House'' and ''Turning Bones''. Martin graduated from Eastern Illinois University, the University of Arkansas and University of Nebraska. He now resides in Columbus, Ohio, where he directs the creative writing program at The Ohio State University.


Awards:
  • -- Finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, ''The Bright Forever''
  • -- Lawrence Foundation Award for''The Bright Forever''
  • -- Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction for ''The Least You Need to Know'' in 1995
  • -- Master Award, Individual Artist Fellowship i

Primary Literary Genre(s): Fiction; Non-Fiction

Email: lee@leemartinauthor.com
Website: http://www.leemartinauthor.com/
Lee Martin on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=lee++martin


Selected Titles

Break the skin :
ISBN: 0307716759 OCLC: 671703667

Crown Publishers, New York : ©2011.

Disaffected teenager Laney has no one in the world but the older Delilah. When the police start asking Laney questions, she finds herself reconstructing a story of suspense, deceit, and revenge ... a story that links her to the sadder-but-wiser Miss Baby, seven hundred miles away in Texas.

From our house :
ISBN: 0452282543 OCLC: 47206946

Plume, New York : 2001.

From our house :
ISBN: 9780803222908 OCLC: 268789853

University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln : 2009.

Outsiders :
ISBN: 1571314091 OCLC: 40331057

Written from beyond the pale by those who don't belong to a majority or dominant group, these poems enter the world of the homeless man on the street, the body of Joan of Arc, the mind of a man who lives between two countries. They sing of loneliness, celebrate the stranger.

Quakertown
ISBN: 9780814254394 OCLC: 975412751

Quakertown /
ISBN: 0525945830 OCLC: 45172802

Dutton, New York : ©2001.

"Based on the true story of a shameful episode in North Texas history," the author tells of "a flourishing black community that was segregated from its white brethren--and of the remarkable gardener who was asked to do the unimaginable."--Jacket.

River of heaven :
ISBN: 0307381242 OCLC: 123079466

Shaye Areheart Books, New York : ©2008.

The mysterious 1955 death of teenager Dewey Finn has a profound impact on Dewey's boyhood friend Sam Brady, until his estranged brother Cal returns home after decades of self-exile and threatens to reveal the secret of that long-ago night.

River of heaven :
ISBN: 9780307381255 OCLC: 236339771

Three Rivers Press, New York : [2009], ©2008.

On an April evening in 1955, Dewey [Finn} died on the railroad tracks outside Mt. Gilead, Illinois, and the mystery of his death still confounds the people of this small town. [The story begins] some fifty years later with Dewey's boyhood friend, Sam Brady, whose solitary adult life has been transformed by what really went on in the days leading up to that evening at the tracks. It's a story he'd do anything to keep from telling, but when his brother, Cal, returns to Mt. Gilead after decades of self-exile, it threatens to surface and change everyone's life.--Page 4 of cover.

Such a life /
ISBN: 0803236476 OCLC: 794490147

University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln : ©2012.

The bright forever :
ISBN: 1400097916 OCLC: 56753425

Shaye Areheart Books, New York : ©2005.

On an evening like any other, nine-year-old Katie Mackey, daughter of the most affluent family in a small town on the plains of Indiana, sets out on her bicycle to return some library books. This simple act is at the heart of The Bright Forever, a suspenseful, deeply affecting novel about the choices people make that change their lives forever. Keeping fact, speculation, and contradiction playing off one another as the details unfold, author Lee Martin creates a fast-paced story that is as gripping as it is richly human. His beautiful, clear-eyed prose builds to an extremely nuanced portrayal of the complicated give and take among people struggling to maintain their humanity in the shadow of a loss. Reminiscent of books such as The Little Friend and The Lovely Bones, but most memorable for its own perceptions and power, The Bright Forever is a compelling and emotional tale about the human need to know even the hardest truth. The disappearance of nine-year-old Katie Mackey, the daughter of the most affluent family in a small Indiana town, while riding her bicycle to town to return some library books, has profound repercussions for her entire family, the perpetrator, and the entire community.

  The bright forever :
ISBN: 141591981X OCLC: 58650728

Books on Tape, Santa Ana, CA : ℗2005.

On an evening like any other, nine-year-old Katie Mackey, daughter of the most affluent family in a small town on the plains of Indiana, sets out on her bicycle to return some library books. This simple act is at the heart of The Bright Forever, a suspenseful, deeply affecting novel about the choices people make that change their lives forever. Keeping fact, speculation, and contradiction playing off one another as the details unfold, author Lee Martin creates a fast-paced story that is as gripping as it is richly human. His beautiful, clear-eyed prose builds to an extremely nuanced portrayal of the complicated give and take among people struggling to maintain their humanity in the shadow of a loss.

The least you need to know :
ISBN: 0964115131 OCLC: 32891176

Sarabande Books, Louisville, KY : ©1996.

Seven stories on people engaged in the business of death. The title story is on a cleaning man whose specialty is cleaning up murder scenes--it is narrated by his son--The End of Sorry is set in an abattoir, and Light Opera is on an undertaker's son.

Turning bones /
ISBN: 0803232314 OCLC: 52030421

University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln : ©2003.

"Farmers and pragmatists, hardworking people who made their way west from Kentucky through Ohio and Indiana to settle at last in southern Illinois, Lee Martin's ancestors left no diaries or journals or letters; apart from the birth certificates and gravestones that marked their comings and goings, they left little written record of their lives. So when Lee, the last living Martin, inherited his great-grandfather's eighty acres and needed to know what had brought his family to this pass and this point, he had only the barest of public records - and the stirrings of his imagination - to connect him to his past, and to his beginnings. Turning Bones is the remarkable story brought to life by this collaboration of personal history and fiction.

 

 

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