Bywater Books is pleased to announce that PAPER IS WHITE by Hilary Zaid has been awarded the 2018 Foreword INDIES Silver in LGBT (Adult Fiction).
When oral historian Ellen Margolis and her girlfriend decide to get married, Ellen realizes that she can’t go through with a wedding until she tells her grandmother. There’s only one problem: her grandmother is dead. As the two young women beat their own early path toward marriage equality, Ellen’s longing to plumb that voluminous silence draws her into a clandestine entanglement with a wily Holocaust survivor–a woman with more to hide than tell–and a secret search for buried history that threatens to disrupt all of Ellen’s plans. If there is to be a wedding Ellen must decide: How much do you need to share to be true to the one you love? Set in ebullient, 1990s Dot-com era San Francisco, Paper is White is a novel about the gravitational pull of the past and the words we must find to make ourselves whole.
“Zaid is fierce, a rebel with a cause, and her breathtaking leaps of imagination make new worlds possible.” —Alexander Chee, PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay writing finalist for his essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
“Paper is White is a wonderfully tender, inventive exploration of survival, secrets, memory, and love. Zaid’s characters are wholly original and riveting, and this story is funny, moving and necessary; you will love this book.” —Karen E. Bender, National Book Award finalist of Refund
“Paper Is White is a nuanced, wholehearted journey through a relationship that remains strong even though many obstacles.” — MAYA ALEXICE, Foreword Reviews
FOREWORD REVIEWS has never strayed from its mission to help booksellers and librarians discover great books from indie presses. At a time when the trade media devoted nearly all its attention on the larger corporate publishers like Random House and Simon & Schuster, the debut of Foreword Reviews introduced a new stream of quality reviews of independently published books to the wholesalers and distributors where booksellers and librarians order their books. Foreword Reviews is dedicated to the “art” of book reviewing. With a review team of talented writers who are experts in their fields, their book-industry journal is designed for a discerning readership—in recognition of the fact that quality paper, generous use of white space, and creative design encourages a time investment by readers.
