She liked it, she really liked it!

I am so pleased to share the news with you that on September 1, 2017, Booklist’s Donna Seaman, published a really, really warm review of And These Are the Good Times:

‘Short story writer McNair (The Temple of Air, 2011) proves to be an irresistible personal essayist of refreshing candor, vibrant openheartedness, rueful humor, and unassuming wisdom. In the title piece, which opens this companionable, down-to-earth collection, young McNair joins her beloved father at Sullivan’s, his favorite tavern, bugging him for coins for the jukebox and dancing happily by herself. Enthralled by music, hubbub, and motion, McNair remains adventurous and omnivorously curious. Swinging backward and forward in time, she vividly chronicles such indelible experiences as spending her seventeenth summer as a volunteer at a dental clinic in Honduras, how she set about losing her virginity after her father died when she was 15, her bartender days, a fling in Cuba, and marriage. McNair frankly addresses sexuality and sexual abuse, the last two presidential elections, and the lives and deaths of loved ones. Throughout these vital, confiding, potent, and superbly well-crafted essays, McNair also muses on her path to becoming a writer and a writing teacher, generously sharing insights into the creative process and “the yearning toward wonder.”‘- Donna Seaman, Booklist, September 1, 2017.

Dennis Foley, my liaison with my publisher Side Street Press, is fond of saying “Yee-hah!” I will join him this time. YEE-HAH!!!!!