2020 Jan Book Group

About the Author

Jessica Handler, a writing professor at Oglethorpe University, is also the author of two nonfiction books: Braving the Fire: A Guide to Writing About Grief and Invisible Sisters: A Memoir, which was named one of the “Twenty Five Books All Georgians Should Read” and Atlanta magazine’s “Best Memoir of 2009.” Jessica has written many essays and other nonfiction features that have appeared on NPR and in numerous national publications.

Author’s website: https://jessicahandler.com/

Listen to Jessica Handler's interview on WABE:

https://www.wabe.org/atlanta-author-jessica-handler-discusses-her-debut-novel-magnetic-girl/

About the Book

A first novel, published in April 2019, The Magnetic Girl was promptly named an Indie Next Pick by booksellers across the The Georgia Center for the Book named this novel among the “Ten Books All Georgians Should Read” in 2019, and it is a finalist for the 2020 Southern Book Prize. This is the inaugural novel in the Cold Mountain Fund Series, which spotlights literary fiction by extraordinary writers from the American South. These writers are selected by National Book Award Winner Charles Frazier and published by Hub City Press.

Lulu Hearst (1869-1950) was a teenager living in Polk County near Cedartown, Georgia, when she went on tour in the South and then up the Eastern Seaboard. In The Magnetic Girl, she is a girl who wants to stop time, to halt the hostile thoughts surrounding her, and to atone for the guilt she feels for her little brother's stunted life. Learning mesmerism from a mysterious family book, she embodies sensitive gifts that her father can capitalize in an era of spiritualists and tricksters on the vaudeville circuit. In the dawn of the age of electricity, it was not hard for folks to believe a lightning storm connecting into Georgia's earth ores could create a magnetic girl -- a girl with an electrifying force that could hurl men across a stage. In this feminist 'coming of age' story, a girl grows into the knowledge of her own power.

Do not miss this archival treasure: Lulu Hurst (The Georgia Wonder) Writes Her Autobiography, and For the First Time Explains and Demonstrates the Great Secret of Her Marvelous Power. Psychic Publishing Company, 1897

See the full text of the 1897 Lulu Hearst Autobiography at:

https://archive.org/details/LuluHursttheGeorgiaWonderWritesHerAutobiography