Randi Davenport is the author of The End of Always (Twelve, May 2014) and of The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes (Algonquin, 2010). In 2011, she received the GLCA New Writer's Award for Creative Non-fiction, and was a finalist for the Books for a Better Life Award. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Huffington Post, Washington Post, Ontario Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Women's History Review, Literature/Film Quarterly, Victorian Literature and Culture, among others.
Randi Davenport has a son and a daughter. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
For more about Randi and THE END OF ALWAYS, visit her website: www.randidavenport.com
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Advance praise for THE END OF ALWAYS:
"Extraordinary. A lament straight from the heart of young womanhood in early twentieth-century America. You will feel this story in your bones." -- Amity Guage, author of SHRODER
“In a first novel as lyrical as it is harrowing, Davenport (author of the memoir The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes) explores the darker side of the American dream and women’s exclusion from its freedoms. Marie Reehs, the child of German immigrants, comes of age in Waukesha, Wis., in the first decade of the 20th century. When she’s 17, Marie loses her mother to a gruesome injury; though the death is deemed an accident, awareness of her father’s violence make the naturally questioning, even visionary girl doubt that convenient explanation. Later, working grueling days as a laundress, Marie reencounters August Bethke, one of the passersby who helped bring her mother home as she was bleeding to death from a stab wound. Soon trysting with him in the woods at night, she finds herself in conflict with her family, her employer (who begins to make passes at her), her coworkers, and her fellow townspeople, who look down on her affair with August. Her elemental passion seems to promise a less constricted future, but Marie finds that neither her family’s painful legacy nor her own female vulnerability is easily escaped. Davenport shapes her story—drawn from her own family history—with scrupulous patience, deftly juxtaposing striking images of the Midwestern landscape with evocations of Marie’s vivid inner world.”—Publisher’s Weekly
Praise for THE BOY WHO LOVED TORNADOES
"Randi Davenport's The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes (Algonquin) is about her son Chase's psychotic breakdown at age 15. One doctor diagnosed him as " 'Chase NOS'--Chase Not Otherwise Specified. 'He's a population of one,' " as is this unforgettable memoir of a shattered family, a mother's abiding love, and the frightening permutations of the human mind."--Lisa Shea, Elle Magazine, April 2010
"A heartbreaking, disturbing, and truly courageous story of one mother's fight to save her son."-- Alice Hoffman
"A gripping memoir of motherly love and absolute devotion."
--Kirkus Reviews
"A brave and beautiful story by a born writer. This is a book like a beacon, offering clarity, inspiration, and validation for us all, especially those of us, like myself, who have struggled with serious mental illness in our families...and that's two out of five families in the United States." -- Lee Smith
"Randi Davenport has written a miraculous book about the heartbreak and devastation that occur when her son is diagnosed with severe mental illness. The Boy Who Love Tornadoes is a gripping and deeply compelling book about a mother's search for the proper care and treatment of her psychotic son. Davenport shows us the gritty and enraging reality of our long fractured mental health system, even at the best health facilities. Davenport's exacting and beautifully written story, along with her ferocity and unrelenting determination to help her child, make her a formidable advocate for those afflicted with these cruel and often stigmatized diseases. The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes is the best book I've read about mental illness since Kay Jamison's An Unquiet Mind." --Virginia Holman, author of Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad
"Davenport writes poignantly. . . . [her] memoir is intensely thorough and affecting." --Publishers Weekly
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