Next Stop

I rarely buy hardbacks.  Rarely.  If you came to my house and peeked at my hardbacks, you would find most of them would have Happy Birthday or Merry Christmas scrawled across the title page. 

Glen Finland's Next Stop is a hardback that I pre-ordered and then eagerly awaited its delivery.  I've known Glen since the first day of graduate school, we were in the MFA program together.  I really like her writing, her fiction and nonfiction.  I've read this book in various stages, as essays, as thinly veiled fiction, and as a collection. 

When the final version arrived on my doorstep from Amazon, I was so excited!  I read while Babyface slept.  It was more polished than the earlier work that I'd read.  I found Next Stop to be brutally honest and well written. 

Glen doesn't just tell you what it's like to raise a family with three sons, the youngest of whom has autism.  She shows you moments big and small and her family's struggles.  She also pulls the curtain back on motherhood and goes beyond the sweet to the smelly and the real experiences.

It's the best kind of nonfiction, the kind that has you thinking for weeks after.