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The Banta Award 2001

I Loved You All
By Paula Sharp
Hyperion Books, 2000

 

 

The 2001 Banta Award BOOK
I Loved You All is set in Stein, New York, in 1977, and tells the story from the voice of eight-year-old Penny Daigle. Sharp details a vivid cast of characters, such as Penny's 15-year-old sister Mahalia and their alcoholic mother, Marguerite. Characters also include F.X., Marguerite's blind, ex-reporter brother, and David, Marguerite's fiancé. Into this mix enters Isabel Flood, a local right-to-life activist now given the responsibility of babysitting Penny and Mahalia while their mother goes to Louisiana to dry out. As Isabel draws Mahalia further and further into the web of the anti-abortion struggle and her fundamentalist church, her influence over Mahalia grows so that it is eventually stronger than Marguerite's. Sharp describes the shattering of the intricate balance of this family with the result being a strangely gentle and funny book that elevates the discussion about the role politics plays in the complexities of family life.

In an interview, Paula Sharp states that the purpose of the book was to "write a lively story that contains vivid characters who seem to breathe free air, who broadcast their feelings and speak their minds."

The AUTHOR
Paula Sharp

Paula Sharp grew up knowing that she was going to be a writer. She was born in San Diego, California, but soon traveled across the country with her mother, sister and brother while her mother studied in doctoral programs in anthropology in South Carolina and Louisiana. Her mother then settled in Ripon, Wisconsin, where Paula spent many of her teen years. After high school, she attended Dartmouth College, receiving her degree in comparative literature in 1979. She returned to New Jersey to teach in a Catholic grade school, followed by work for the Jersey City Public Defenders Office. This exposure to the legal system led her to law school at Columbia University where she received her law degree in 1985. In 1988, while visiting her sister on an archeological dig in South America, Paula completed her first novel, The Woman Who Was Not All There, which won the New Voice Award from the Quality Paperback Book Club. The Imposter, her collection of short stories published in 1991, was awarded the Banta Award from the Wisconsin Library Association in 1992. Her second novel, Lost in Jersey City, was published in 1993, followed by Crows over Wheatfield in 1996. Paula now resides in New York State and writes full time.

2001 WLA Literary Awards Committee Members