Next year, University of Iowa Press will publish my second novel, The Tigers of Lents, which I worked on over the course of twelve years.
The Tigers of Lents unfolds a seldom seen side of Portland, Oregon. It’s a family saga set in Lents, an outer neighborhood not found in hip magazines or clever TV shows. It’s an area, in part, of evictions, chain-link fences, and gravel roads.
Sara is the eldest teenage daughter, a fiery soccer star scared to take the way out offered by her talent. Next is Elaine, shy and struggling with her weight, who might have the grandest dreams of them all. The youngest sister, Rachel, is a reader and poet whose imagination stalls at trying to picture a better life. The girls’ hard-edged mother, Melanie, works full-time as a grocery store cashier, and their estranged father, Keith, has just returned to Lents after serving a prison term for burglary.
Even as the Garrisons struggle to communicate with each other, as they battle self- doubts and self-sabotage, they draw on a fierce shared strength that allows them to push back at the reality that's been handed to them.
The Tigers of Lents depicts a part of America that many people don’t seem to understand, and works as a companion to the likes of Matthew Desmond’s Evicted and Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed. It shows how three sisters living in poverty struggle to hold on to their dignity, often through daily acts of grace and good humor, to say nothing of quiet grit, and how they don’t like to be underestimated.
To those of you who have asked about my writing over the years, thanks for your faith. I look forward to sharing The Tigers of Lents.
Mark, congrats on the new book. It sounds remarkable and an important story to tell about Portland and America at large.