WE ARE ALL WELCOME HERE by Elizabeth Berg
ISBN: 140006161X
Format: Hardcover, 208pp
Pub. Date: April 4, 2006
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Elizabeth Berg has an unbelievable ability to turn every day life into gorgeous, richly detailed and textured prose that leaves the reader mesmerized and lost in the worlds she creates. These are worlds that could and do belong to us all. She writes about our mothers, our sisters, our husbands and wives and our friends. It is for this reason that slipping into an Elizabeth Berg book feels often like coming home. With WE ARE ALL WELCOME HERE, Berg captured the heart and sole of a polio victim and her 13-year-old daughter in the summer of 1964. The story takes place in Tupelo, Mississippi, and makes someone who has never been there feel they could call it home. Paige Dunn contracted polio at 22 and was forced to deliver her baby from an iron lung. This is triumphant alone, but the fact that she then ends up raising her daughter Diana, alone after her husband divorces her, shows the unbelievable strength Berg has created in a character. When we learn in the author’s note that this story was in fact based on truth, our hearts grow that much more for the fictional characters Berg has created. It was based in truth and grew even more beautiful and poignant through the work of a brilliant writer.
