Sara B. Fraser
Author | Award-Winning Novelist
Sara B. Fraser is an award-winning author whose novels and short stories explore the resilience of ordinary people with humor and compassion. Her work has been recognized with numerous awards including the 2022 American Fiction Award Winner for Humor, the 2022 Wishing Shelf Book Awards Silver Medal, and the 2023 NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite. Her writing combines elements of screwball comedy with savvy social analysis, creating stories that are both entertaining and deeply human.
Books
Just River
Published November 24, 2021 by Black Rose Writing
The Otis, an inconsequential river-not the Hudson-flows through Wattsville, a small city a few hours north but a universe away from the real City, capital C. You might think the everyday people who live here, in this land of scarce opportunity, are also inconsequential. Until you meet them.
Sam, a cross-dresser with a voice like Tina Turner's and his best friend Carol, a cashier who stress eats, prove their mettle when Carol's daughter Garnet is imprisoned for defending herself against a violent boyfriend. Sam and Carol's plots to save Garnet have consequences, however. An innocent boy is blamed for their actions and kidnapped, a dog gets poisoned, and Garnet's life is imperiled as parole becomes a distant dream. In the end, it's the river that offers up justice for these heroes-at-heart. But they will need to be able to swim.
Long Division
Published March 21, 2019 by Black Rose Writing
Thirtysomething Leigh Fortune never thought she'd make it this far. Emerging from the ashes of a traumatic childhood, she's managed to plant her flag on Terra Normal. But under the surface she's unsure—of herself, of her fiancée, of everything. A letter informing her of her estranged mother's death tips her from uncertainty into emotional upheaval and sends her on a journey that will take her from the dunes of Cape Cod to Las Vegas and back.
Will she—with the help of her elderly grandmother, an HIV-positive social worker, and a few ghosts—finally be able to leave childhood hurt behind? Or will she upend the life she's created and fall back into familiar patterns of self-destructiveness? To free herself from her past, Leigh will need to learn to accept her own faults as well as forgive those of others.