Harriet Scott Chessman on The Beauty of Ordinary Things

The guest is Harriet Scott Chessman, whose new novel is The Beauty of Ordinary Things, released this winter by Atelier26.

Chessman is the author of Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper and Someone Not Really Her Mother.

The Beauty of Ordinary Things, set in the early 1970s, concerns the unlikely love and friendship between a young Vietnam veteran and a Benedictine nun. The renowned Ron Hansen calls The Beauty of Ordinary Things “a soulful, tender, affecting novel, with complex, searching, sympathetic characters whose situations and plights one deeply cares about."

Atelier26 is a micro-press in Portland, Oregon, founded autumn 2011 with the aim to publish fiction by contemporary writers in fine editions showcasing the highest design standards.