Same As It Ever Was

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Description

At fifty-seven, Julia Ames has found herself with an improbably lovely life. Despite her inclination towards self-sabotage, she has a husband she loves, two happy children and a quiet, contented existence in the suburbs. But, out of the blue, things begin to change.

Her always well-behaved son, Ben, is acting strangely, and will soon make a shocking announcement.

Her beloved but belligerent teenage daughter is about to depart for college, leaving Julia unexpectedly terrified of an empty nest.

And, in the local grocery store, Julia encounters a woman she hasn't seen for 20 years - a woman whose friendship was once both her lifeline and, very nearly, her downfall.

Consumed with her checkered past and the chaos of her present, Julia starts to spin out of control, at risk of destroying all she most loves. Following Julia over the course of a few tumultuous months, bookended by a birthday party and a wedding, and examining the fifty-plus years before, Same as It Ever Was examines the complete and complicated trajectory of one woman's life and asks what it takes to make - and to not break - a family.

Author Bio

Claire Lombardo is a 2017 graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has been the recipient of an Iowa Arts Fellowship and a Sun Valley Writers' Conference Fellowship. She is currently an adjunct professor of creative writing at the University of Iowa, and teaches fiction writing at the Iowa Young Writers' Studio. Her short fiction has appeared in, among others, Barrelhouse Magazine, Little Fiction, and Longform. Born and raised in Oak Park, Illinois, she now lives in Iowa City.