Kathryn Fitzmaurice

Book Title: THE YEAR THE SWALLOWS CAME EARLY

Genre: Contemporary Middle Grade Fiction

Publication Date: February 9, 2009

Publisher: The Bowen Press (An Imprint of HarperCollins)

ISBN: 978-0-06-162497-1

Author’s Website: www.kathrynfitzmaurice.com

Novel Description:

Eleanor “Groovy” Robinson knows the right recipe for everything - for delighting her daddy (her favorite food critic), and tempting her always dieting Mama, for feeding the tourists who come to her California seaside town each spring to watch the famous swallows return, and for sharing with her best friend, Frankie. But the happiness she finds in cooking fails Groovy the day everything begins changing - the day her daddy is arrested and sent to jail. Slowly, though, Groovy discovers that change can bring good things, too - like new friends, long overdue visitors, and the taste of second chances. And as Groovy begins to expect the unexpected, she learns the importance of forgiveness and starts to understand the complex stories of the people around her. And on a night where nothing goes as planned, she is amazed to discover that even a really big shake up can’t get in the way of a family who needs to come together.

About the Author:

When Kathryn was thirteen years old, she spent the summer with her grandmother in New York City, who was a science fiction writer. After seeing how her grandmother could make her characters into whomever she wanted, Kathryn decided she wanted to become a writer someday, too. After teaching elementary school in California, earning her Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction, and taking many writing classes, she now writes full time, and lives in Monarch Beach, California, with her husband, two sons, and her adored dog, Holly. As a past teacher, one of Kathryn’s favorite things to do is to visit schools and libraries. She has experience in managing and presenting to large groups of adults and students, as well as small groups under thirty, and can tailor any presentation to meet the needs of specific individual groups as well. THE YEAR THE SWALLOWS CAME EARLY is her first novel. She is busy writing her second.

Novel Excerpt:

We lived in a perfect stucco house, just off the sparkly Pacific, with a lime tree in the back yard and pink and yellow roses gone wild around a picket fence. But that wasn’t enough to keep my daddy from going to jail the year I turned eleven. I told my best friend, Frankie, that it was hard to tell what something was like on the inside just by looking at the outside. And that our house was like one of those See’s candies with beautiful swirled chocolate on the outside, but sometimes hiding coconut flakes on the inside, all gritty and hard, like undercooked white rice.
Things that look just right come undone quicker than the last day of summer. And one day, it happened right in front of me. The horoscope Mama read to me that morning should’ve been enough warning: Expect the unexpected. I’d raised my eyebrows and smiled, thinking the unexpected might be finally discovering a way to chop onions without crying or finding a dollar on the street, something unexpected, but in a good way.
It wasn’t.

Author Photo: Audie England