FORTHCOMING IN SEPTEMBER
From Mariner Houghton Mifflin:
"Loosely based on Porter Shreve’s own childhood, When the White House Was Ours is the atmospheric and captivating story of a family’s struggle to stay together against great odds.
It's 1976, and while the country prepares to celebrate the bicentennial, Daniel Truitt's family is falling apart. His father, Pete, has been fired from yet another teaching job, and his mother, Valerie, is one step away from leaving for good. But when Pete lucks into a crumbling mansion in the nation's capital, he makes a bold plan to start a school under his own roof where students and teachers will be equals.
Replete with the wry humor, human insight and cultural resonance that characterizes Shreve’s critically acclaimed fiction, When the White House Was Ours will be a joy to anyone whose family has lived through an idealistic time and ended up in an era of compromise."
PRAISE FOR PORTER SHREVE
“Porter Shreve has always had a keen feel for a story and an instinct for what is interesting in the world. He is a wonderful and accomplished young writer.” -- Lorrie Moore, author of Birds of America and Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?
WHEN THE WHITE HOUSE WAS OURS
"When the White House Was Ours is as good as it gets. Porter Shreve tells the story of the Truitts, a most unusual displaced family who come to Washington, DC from the Midwest to start an alternative school in a white house. They arrive about the same time Jimmy Carter, the man from Plains, comes to another White House with a credo about trust. The end result is a tale of sheer delight—beautifully told in perfect pitch." --Jim Lehrer, Host of "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" and author of Eureka and The Last Debate
"Porter Shreve does what few writers can -- he casts a spell, bringing you immediately and completely into a world you won't soon want to leave. This is a humane, tender and intimate story about what it means to be a famliy, to be idealistic in an all too pragmatic world." --Joe McGinnis Jr., author of The Delivery Man
THE OBITUARY WRITER
"An involving and sneakily touching story whose twists feel less like the conventions of a genre than the convolutions of a heart - any heart." --Louis Bayard, New York Times
"Fast-paced, deftly observed... a work that glides along so smoothly and unpredictably that you nearly forget that the author is not only a fine storyteller but a shrewd psychologist.... a substantial achievement." --Dan Cryer, Newsday
DRIVES LIKE A DREAM
“A beautiful novel, carefully put together, full of charming secondary characters, charitable to all.”
--Carolyn See, Washington Post
“A shrewd observer of character… smart and funny. [Shreve] creates a rich family history and intriguing intellectual life for Lydia and touches deep emotional veins in her relationship with her children.” --Sandra Scofield, Chicago Tribune
BIO
Porter Shreve was born during the Lyndon Johnson administration, grew up in Washington, DC and has attended three presidential inaugurations: Carter ‘77, Clinton ‘93, and Clinton ‘97. In the 1970s his family started an alternative school called “Our House Is a Very, Very, Very Fine House,” and some of When the White House Was Ours draws loosely from that experience. Shreve’s first novel, The Obituary Writer, was a New York Times Notable Book, and his second, Drives Like a Dream, was a Chicago Tribune Book of the Year, among other honors. He lives with his wife, the writer Bich Minh Nguyen, in Chicago and West Lafayette, Indiana, where he directs the Creative Writing Program at Purdue University.