Beahrs, Andrew 1973–

views updated

Beahrs, Andrew 1973–

PERSONAL: Born 1973, in CT; married; wife's name Eli (a teacher); children: Erik. Education: Attended University of California at Berkeley; University of Virginia, M.S.; Spalding University, M.F.A. Hobbies and other interests: SCUBA diving, capoeira, playing the cello, bluegrass music.

ADDRESSES: Home—Berkeley, CA. Agent—c/o Author Mail, The Toby Press, 2 Great Pasture Rd., Danbury, CT 06810. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer.

WRITINGS:

Strange Saint (novel), Toby Press (Danbury, CT), 2005.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A companion novel to Strange Saint; a novel about musical innovations in Paris around the time of the French Revolution.

SIDELIGHTS: An archeologist by training, Andrew Beahrs endeavored to write a first novel that uses some of his educational background, adding realism to his tale about the Pilgrims. Melode, the main character in Strange Saint, is enduring a life of servitude in England when she joins Adam, the son of a minister of the Saints—or Pilgrims—on a boat to the New World. Although she is falling in love with Adam, in his increasing religious fervor he soon rejects her. Me-lode subsequently has an affair with another man and becomes pregnant. Disgraced, she is thrown off the ship and left in Newfoundland, where she and her child face a new struggle just to survive. In a mixed blessing, she is rescued and makes her way to the new colony, where she finds herself a social reject among the pious Pilgrims. Although Mark Andre Singer commented in a Library Journal review that the heroine's views on sex were a bit hard to believe, the exciting plot in Strange Saint "smoothes out the occasional stylistic wrinkle." A Publishers Weekly contributor praised this "moving" story for its "sumptuous description and … period's language."