In McBride’s debut novel “We Are Called To Rise,” far from the neon lights of the Vegas strip, lives are about to collide. A middle-aged woman attempting to revive her marriage. A returning soldier waking up in a hospital bed with no memory of how he got there. A very brave eight-year-old immigrant boy. Three lives are bound together by a split-second mistake, and a child’s fate hangs in the balance. “We Are Called to Rise” is a story about families—the ones we have and the ones we make. It’s a story about America today, where so many cultures and points of view collide and coexist, showing what happens when the protective borders of our lives are suddenly smashed and how ordinary strangers can rise to the extraordinary challenge of caring for each other.
On Monday’s Access Utah Tom Williams talks with Laura McBride about her novel, about living and raising kids in an exotic (ordinary?) place like Las Vegas, and her list of five books to read before dying.
It all matters. That someone turns out the lamp, picks up the windblown wrapper, says hello to the invalid, pays at the unattended lot, listens to the repeated tale, folds the abandoned laundry, plays the game fairly, tells the story honestly, acknowledges help, gives credit, says good night, resists temptation, wipes the counter, waits at the yellow, makes the bed, tips the maid, remembers the illness, congratulates the victor, accepts the consequences, takes a stand, steps up, offers a hand, goes first, goes last, chooses the small portion, teaches the child, tends to the dying, comforts the grieving, removes the splinter, wipes the tear, directs the lost, touches the lonely, is the whole thing.
What is most beautiful is least acknowledged.
What is worth dying for is barely noticed.
Laura McBride is a writer and community college teacher in Las Vegas, Nevada. She says that she appreciates the beautiful and explosive possibilities of her home town: a community in which the conventional and social boundaries are unusually fluid, and where she has witnessed the power of second chances.
Laura McBride’s “We Are Called to Rise” (Simon & Schuster 2014) was a #1 Indie Next pick and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writer's choice in the United States, and both a Simon Mayo BBC Radio 2 Book Club selection and a Waterstones Book Club pick in the UK. McBride teaches composition and literature at the College of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas.
Laura McBride's: 5 Books Everyone Should Read Before They Die
