In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Lisa Malawski talks with Kathleen Paris about her book Gentle Comforts For Women Grieving the Loss of a Beloved Life Companion.

As an author, educator, and management consultant, Paris has assisted organizations over the past thirty years to plan for new realities and improve their systems and organizational climate. She currently holds the title of Distinguished Consultant Emeritus from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Paris has consulted in the United States and internationally in Canada, Cyprus, France,

Guam, Switzerland, Virgin Islands, and the UK Kathleen lost her beloved husband Matt Cullen, of twenty-five years in 2018. She has been reaching out ever since to other grieving women.

The dedication of her book reads “To my husband, Matt Cullen the best person I ever knew.”

One of the frequently asked questions of Kathleen, is why did you write Gentle Comforts?

Kathleen’s response is that she started journaling the day her husband died and from then on wrote to him every night. The journal was the foundation of Gentle Comforts. And as the months went on, it occurred to Kathleen that she could take the worst thing that ever happened to her and help others in the same situation.Gentle Comforts for Women Grieving the Loss of a Beloved Life Companion was published by ACTA Publications in 2024. The book is organized to follow a woman-in-mourning’s experiences over time. There is journaling space with short prompt questions for each reflection. There are easy healthy recipes for one person included for each of the 50 topics. The book is written in a gentle and encouraging voice of one who has been there. So many of us have lost someone in our lives, and the hope was that this show could touch you in some way, ease your burden, and for you to know that there are so many of us struggling with our losses. Here is the Irish quote from the front of Kathleen’s book: “Death leaves a heartache no one can heal. Love leaves a memory no one can steal.”

A note from Kathleen Paris:

Friday, August 30 is National Grief Awareness Day. Every year it is on August 30.

Aimed at educating people about grief, providing resources and helping people feel less alone.

In this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie speaks with Milwaukee-based author Katharine Beutner about her Edna Ferber Award-winning novel, Killingly, which is out now in paperback from Soho Crime.

Massachusetts, 1897: Bertha Mellish, “the most peculiar, quiet, reserved girl” at Mount Holyoke College, is missing. As a search team dredges the pond where Bertha might have drowned, her panicked father and sister arrive desperate to find some clue to her fate or state of mind. Bertha’s best friend, Agnes, a scholarly loner studying medicine, might know the truth, but she is being unhelpfully tightlipped, inciting the suspicions of Bertha’s family, her classmates, and the private investigator hired by the Mellish family doctor. As secrets from Agnes’s and Bertha’s lives come to light, so do the competing agendas driving each person who is searching for Bertha. Where did Bertha go? Who would want to hurt her? And could she still be alive?

Katharine Beutner takes a real-life unsolved mystery and crafts it into an unforgettable historical portrait of academia, family trauma, and the risks faced by women who dared to pursue unconventional paths at the end of the 19th century. Katharine is an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; previously, she taught in Ohio and Hawai`i. She earned a BA in Classical Studies at Smith College and an MA in English (creative writing) and a PhD in English literature at the University of Texas at Austin. Her first novel, Alcestis, won the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award and was a finalist for other awards, including the Lambda Literary Association’s Lesbian Debut Fiction Award.

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with Henry Wise on his debut novel, Holy City (2024, Grove Atlantic Press).

Holy City is a novel that grabs your attention by the opening sentence and propels you into a world of crime, guilt, unrealized desire, and vanquished hopes and dreams. The narrative shuttles between Richmond, Virginia–the eponymous Holy City–and the rural county of Euphoria. Anything but euphoric, it’s peopled by a cast of characters both burned out on the passage of time and not very optimistic about the present. We encounter people enduring the harsh realities of poverty, the legacies of racism, the personal and historical ghosts of the past, as well as the fickleness of the small town legal system. Everyone’s running from something, and everyone’s got something to hide. We encounter this world through the eyes of Deputy Sheriff Will Seems, a prodigal son of sorts who returns to Euphoria from Richmond after a decade away. While immediately embroiled in the investigation of a brutal homicide, our brooding protagonist must navigate a guilty past, a fraught relationship with family, and an increasingly suspect county Sheriff. Its fast pacing is complemented by a striking poetic lyricism that demands regularly slowing down and relishing in the talents of this poet-turned-novelist.

Henry Wise is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and the University of Mississippi MFA Program. His work has appeared in Shenandoah, Nixes Mate, Radar Poetry, Clackamas, and elsewhere. His nonfiction and photography have appeared in Southern Cultures. Holy City is his first novel.