Laskas, Gretchen Moran 1969-

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Laskas, Gretchen Moran 1969-

PERSONAL:

Born September 15, 1969, in Philippi, WV; married Karl Laskas (a lawyer), 1990; children: Brennan. Education: University of Pittsburgh, B.A., 1992.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Fairfax, VA. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Book of the Year, Appalachian Writers Association, 1994, and Weatherford Award, 2003, both for The Midwife's Tale.

WRITINGS:

The Midwife's Tale (novel), Dial (New York, NY), 2003.

The Miner's Daughter (novel), Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to periodicals, including Pleiades and Salt Hill.

SIDELIGHTS:

In her debut novel, The Midwife's Tale, Gretchen Moran Laskas offers "a tender story of broken dreams," in the words of Booklist critic Elsa Gaztambide. Set in the Appalachian hills of West Virginia in the early 1900s, The Midwife's Tale concerns Elizabeth Whitely, who is destined to become a midwife like her mother and grandmother before her. Elizabeth is secretly in love with Alvin Denniker, a married man whose wife, Ivy, calls upon Elizabeth to help her through a difficult delivery. To show their gratitude, Alvin and Ivy name the baby Lauren Elizabeth, and Elizabeth befriends the couple.

After Ivy dies, Elizabeth moves in with Alvin and becomes a mother to Lauren. Alvin and Elizabeth try to start their own family, but they discover that Elizabeth cannot bear children of her own. The family's simple life is disrupted when Lauren displays an amazing gift for healing, and while Alvin takes his daughter to California to escape the resulting local notoriety, Elizabeth stays behind, tending to the needs of others. As Pam Kingsbury noted on the Southern Scribe Web site, while Elizabeth "may not be able to follow her own heart, she learns how to comfort other women's hearts."

Critics praised the novel's atmosphere as well as the author's attention to small details. "The Midwife's Tale unspools gently across the page, as comforting in its nostalgia as the sound of an old foot-pump organ in a country church," wrote David Abrams in January. Eileen Zimmerman Nicol, reviewing the work for the Bookreporter.com Web site, stated that "Laskas salts her narrative with the vernacular of the time and place." According to Library Journal contributor Lisa Nussbaum, The Midwife's Tale is ultimately about "the complex relationships between mothers and daughters, grandmothers and granddaughters, friends and lovers and about the inheritance of and passing on of family traditions."

Similar praise greeted the publication of The Miner's Daughter, a novel for young adults. Again drawing on family history, Laskas here tells the story of sixteen-year-old Willa Lowell, the titular miner's daughter who struggles to break free of poverty in Depression-era West Virginia. When the mines close, throwing her father and brothers out of work, Willa does what she can to help her family survive, even disguising herself as a boy to work in the local fields during the summer. When Grace, a newcomer, opens a library and community center in the destitute mining camp, Willa devours books and dreams of a better life. A burgeoning romance, however, forces her to make a difficult decision: to stay with her family in order to help them take advantage of a New Deal program, or leave them behind to marry her sweetheart. "This is a carefully written example of what poverty means to hard-working families," observed Kliatt contributor Claire Rosser. Noting the novel's "beautifully realized historical details," a contributor to Kirkus Reviews hailed The Miner's Daughter as a "fine coming-of-age story."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 1, 2003, Elsa Gaztambide, review of The Midwife's Tale, pp. 1145-1146; February 15, 2007, Krista Hutley, review of The Miner's Daughter, p. 71.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, May, 2007, Karen Coats, review of The Miner's Daughter, p. 374.

January, September, 2003, David Abrams, "Birthin' Babies in Old Appalachia."

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2003, review of The Midwife's Tale, p. 165; December 15, 2006, review of The Miner's Daughter, p. 1270.

Kliatt, January, 2007, Claire Rosser, review of The Miner's Daughter, p. 15.

Library Journal, March 15, 2003, Lisa Nussbaum, review of The Midwife's Tale, p. 115.

Library Media Connection, August, 2007, Ruth Cox Clark, review of The Miner's Daughter, p. 70.

School Library Journal, February, 2007, Denise Moore, review of The Miner's Daughter, p. 122.

Voice of Youth Advocates, April, 2007, Lucy Schall, review of The Miner's Daughter, p. 52.