Small wonder

a novel by Eileen Kelly

Coming 8/6/2024

Print ISBN: 979-8-9887213-6-9

eBook ISBN: 979-8-9887213-7-6

“Small Wonder is clever and dark, humorous and harrowing. And it is hard to put down.”
— Clifford Thompson, author of What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues and Twin of Blackness: A Memoir
“…Pitch-perfect, realistic capture of urban domestic life in our time, it adds a dose of gaslighting drama that would put Les Diaboliques to shame.”
— Madison Smartt Bell, author of numerous books including Behind the Moon
“Kelly’s sweet-and-sour style had me hooked from the first page, and the novel’s twisty plot does not disappoint.”
— Diane Josefowicz, author of Ready, Set, Oh
“Kelly’s rich detail exquisitely captures the joys and horrors of being children and raising children in a modern world…”
— Karen Lee Boren, author of Secret Waltz

About Small Wonder

Tina, a 30-year-old preschool teacher, sees her life slipping by. She is the mother of ten-year-old Matty, the product of an unexpected adventure on a European train. But he’s a great kid and she’s a wonderful mother, if more than a bit economically challenged. This is especially true for a resident of Park Slope, Brooklyn, a granola-fancy neighborhood of multi-million-dollar brownstones and Prada-toting, vaccine-hesitant moms. Every day she takes her run with her dog, goes to work, looks after her friend/neighbor/landlady’s girl, has a few glasses of wine, and, well, that’s about it.

Enter Patrick, new to town from Boulder, Colorado. He is the father of Jonah, a new boy in Tina’s preschool class, as well as Darla, who coincidentally is in the same class as Tina’s son. Patrick and the kids moved hoping to get a fresh start after Patrick’s wife’s tragic death in a fall from a cliff during a family camping trip.

But starting over is not so easy, and the aftershocks of that catastrophe have followed the children to their new home. The kids begin to act out, and Tina finds herself defending their increasingly bad behavior. After all, as far as Tina can tell, poor Patrick seems to be doing his best.

Meanwhile, both Tina’s housing situation and her job are hanging by a thread, and change may be coming whether she’s ready for it or not. The Park Slope moms want Tina to go to law school, since teaching preschool looks to them like a dead-end job. Tina doesn’t know what she wants.

The kids become (sort-of) friends, and that means Tina spending time with Patrick. She finds him to be an attractive man who endears himself to nearly everyone he meets, and soon it becomes clear that he is both available and interested. Maybe something will work out there for Tina—a big, happy blended family, perhaps?

A portion of the proceeds from Small Wonder goes to the Center for Popular Democracy, working to create equity, opportunity and a dynamic democracy in partnership with high-impact base-building organizations, organizing alliances, and progressive unions.

About the author

Eileen Kelly lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she writes development documents for criminal justice and mental health nonprofits and fiction for children and adults. Her stories have appeared in the Tupelo Quarterly and Wrongdoing Magazine.  A very long time ago, she won the Hopwood Award in the Novel from the University of Michigan’s MFA program. This is her first published novel.