Ziesk's debut novel is a story of loss and the effort to replace what is lost with love. Set in a small New Jersey shore town, the narrative traces the intersecting lives of three young people, silhouetted against the backdrop of the tumultuous years that saw the deaths of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., and spanned the Vietnam War.
Thirteen-year-old Joellen, grieving for her mother's untimely death, and Joe Handy, two years older, emotionally stunted by his father's repeated abandonments, come together as an attempt to compensate for their respective losses. Charlie-o, Joellen's childhood friend, is left behind as she moves beyond the pale of childish things, into a passion edged in desperation.
EDRA ZIESK has taught English composition at Hunter College and fiction writing at New York University. Her fiction has appeared in anthologies and in publications including Other Voices, Folio, Blueline, and Playgirl. Ziesk lives in New York City in an apartment so small she has to sit on the steps outside to write when her daughter is home from school.
What Readers Are Saying:
"Past is present here, as Ziesk skillfully shifts her voices, and loss becomes acceptable in the wisdom and the light, biting comedy of a journey that is common, in its way, to all of us." --Toby Olson
"I was snatched up and kept by Acceptable Losses. It's an absolutely fine novel, ambitious in the best ways, powerful in the momentum it creates, and populated with characters I really cared about. Ziesk's prose is electric, her insights as vast as her sympathies." --Frederick Busch