The Heart of a Thirsty Woman
Josie Tolliver, a twenty-seven-year-old romantic who feels claustrophobic in her 1976 small Kentucky town, convinces her homebody husband to join her on a journey West in search of Josie's sister, Carlos Castaneda, and enlightenment
Read More
The misadventures of a mismatched couple, a woman's quest for her missing sister, and the secrets of life revealed in Carlos Castaneda's writings mark this off-beat novel as truly special. The Heart of a Thirsty Woman gives new evidence of Witt's singular voice and immense talent. "Pick made me who I am, but it don't tell the whole story." For twenty-seven-year-old Josie Tolliver -- a bookworm who has taken both William Shakespeare and Carlos Castaneda to heart -- her hometown of Pick, Kentucky, is starting to feel very confining. It's 1976 and disco is alive and kicking, but Josie refuses to believe this. She daydreams of going West, convinced that if she can just get to Arizona or California, she'll find people on every street corner divulging the secrets of life. Josie's childhood sweetheart and now husband, Clarence, on the other hand, doesn't want to go anywhere. Clarence, a whiz at all things mechanical, dreams of expanding his TV repair shop into the first TV satellite-dish business in eastern Kentucky. The Heart of a Thirsty Woman is the exuberant, rollicking, and ultimately moving story of what happens when, through a series of calamities and mishaps, Josie heads West, dragging Clarence behind her. As Josie launches a search for her long-lost sister, Cheyenne, and pursues her quest for her idol Castaneda's don Juan, she slowly comes to the hard-won realization that no one -- not Cheyenne, not Clarence, not her wonderful father, and not even Carlos Castaneda -- can show her the way.
Read Less