Remembering Jody

Marsha Rose is spending the summer in Seattle with her lover, Paul. Paul is supportive, understanding, and artist, and he has a voice she can curl up inside of. With him, the rootless, peripatetic, commitment-shy Marsha can a least imagine somehting like home. She can even consider making the arrangement more permanent.

The Jody shows up, literally outside her window.

Inseparable as childern, virtually twinned by their parents' close friendship and their own emotional intimacy, Marsha and Jody grew up Jewish together in the hard-shell Baptist country of South Carolina, but ten years have passed since Marsha has last seen Jody. While that decade has brought Marsha success writing flip, sophisticated articles bearing little resemblance to her actual loose-ended life in Wahsington, D.C., it has led Jody to a severe mental breakdown—a condition for which Marsha has assumed a crushing burden of guilt.

Jody's unexpected appearance in Seattle forces Marsha to confront her own history, and the past she has never been able to dismiss collides with a present she cannot easily embrace. One the other side of the impact lies Marsha Rose's future.

“I admired Coburn's wonderful ear for dialogue, her journalist's powers of observation. . . We might expect more comic gems from her.” -- The San Francisco Chronicle, Jason K. Friedman

“The depictions of a schizophrenic's symptoms and the confusion these produce for both him and his family are accurate and touching. This is a book with heart and wisdom that should appeal to a wide readership.” -- Library Journal

“Coburn's deft, lyrical prose underscores and reinforces this heartrending tale of friendship, love, and mental illness. . . A wry and compassionate emotional roller-coaster ride from a master storyteller.” -- Booklist

“Randy Sue Coburn's wise first novel takes on the twin challenges of love and mental illness. . . There are no miracle cures in Remembering Jody, but there is an abiding optimism in the realization that Marsha and Jody are both better people for having known one another.” -- Alix Wilber, Amazon.com

“A poignant examination of the effects of mental illness on friends and family.” -- Book Mark

“A heartfelt, tightly paced first novel in which two childhood friends must confront their past after a decade apart.” -- John Marshall, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

1999, Carroll & Graf
ISBN 0786705663