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Ardyth Kennelly at home in Portland, Oregon, in the 1990s
(photo courtesy of Scott & Julie Fisher)
Publishing the late-life works of Oregon author Ardyth Kennelly
Page last revised November 25, 2024
Seven decades after Ardyth Kennelly delighted readers with her best-selling books of the 1950s, Sunnycroft Books is pleased to be publishing the works that she wrote later in her life.
Variation West (2014) is a sweeping novel that covers not only a century of Western life and history, but also the vast territory of the human heart. It's an immense literary collage, with dozens of engaging characters and a wealth of both comic and tragic stories to tell. We see not only the humor and heartaches of domestic life under Mormon polygamy, but also the sacrifices—including death and disfigurement—that women make in trying to fulfill society's expectations of female beauty; the unspeakable violence that men do; and how patterns laid down in the distant past resurface again and again.
Bodies Adjacent: Ardyth's Memoir & Egon's Journal (2023) is Ardyth Kennelly's story of her life with her husband, the Jewish Viennese physician Egon V. Ullman. In the middle of her memoir, Ardyth places the journal that Egon kept from 1947 to 1956, during the years that Ardyth was writing and publishing her books. Bodies Adjacent is a captivating and singular love story—painfully honest, yet utterly enchanting and sweet.
New York on $5 a Day (2024) is a brief but charming memoir of Ardyth Kennelly's 1963–64 sojourn in New York City. It’s a chatty and engaging reminiscence about the unusual people she met in New York—including the English witch Sybil Leek, the minor poet Sanders Russell, the Spanish Civil War veteran Robert Raven, the dancer Raymond Duncan, and the writer Anzia Yezierska. Ardyth also writes thoughtfully and vividly about the world of New York as she herself—a well-read but not terribly worldly woman from the West—experienced it.
For more about Ardyth Kennelly's life and work, please click here.
What people are saying about Variation West:
"Found treasure: Ardyth Kennelly's unique voice—
wry, compassionate, evocative—is back! With telling detail, her memorable characters invite readers into a life that is both 'other' and familiar. Her powerful, highly original writing rewards those who come looking for literary gold."
Rosalie Maggio, author of How to Say It
"Every one of the 760 pages is worth savoring."
Ann Chamberlin, Historical Novel Society review