NEW RELEASE
Always, Tessie
Always, Tessie is a 1960s version of a #MeToo story. A semi-fictional novel, it is about a young woman high school basketball player and her boyfriend who find themselves enmeshed in her story of hidden sexual abuse, recovered memory, and their discovery of a possible pathway to healing.
Set against the tensions of the Vietnam War era, high school lovers Tessie Faber and Derek Hemphill are trapped in a 1960s society that doesn’t pay serious attention to sexual abuse and the victimization of women. As Tessie reveals her subterranean past, Derek's eyes are opened, and they try to build their relationship on empathy and healing – a kind of psychological Truth and Reconciliation partnership. Inspired by Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Doug Underwood's Always, Tessie is a reflection of what women faced – and can still face – despite the contemporary #MeToo movement.
ABOUT
Doug Underwood teaches about trauma, journalism, and literature at the University of Washington in Seattle. Besides Always, Tessie, his first novel, he has written six nonfiction books, including Chronicling Trauma: Journalists and Writers on Violence and Loss, along with ones about the intertwined history of journalism and fiction writing. Before teaching creative nonfiction writing at the UW, he was a political and investigative journalist for The Seattle Times, the Gannett News Service in Washington, D.C, and the State Journal in Lansing, Michigan. A native of the Pacific Northwest, he grew up in the Portland area and lives in Seattle.
