Miriam Herin
I’m Miriam Herin, the author of Absolution and A Stone for Bread, the novel that won the Legacy category in the 2020 Eric Hoffer Awards and prior to publication was a top-ten finalist in the 2014 Faulkner-Wisdom novel competition. In 2016, it received a starred Kirkus Indie review and was selected a Kirkus Indie Best Book of 2016. That same year, it was nominated for North Carolina’s prestigious Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction. My first novel, Absolution won the 2007 Novello Press Literary Award and was cited by Publishers Weekly as an “impressive” debut that “skillfully combines a contemporary courtroom thriller with a subtle look back at the competing passions and pressures of the Vietnam War era.”
Miriam is the parent of two adult children and grandparent of a delightful 13-year-old. She and her husband live in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Miriam’s books are available at booksellers and online.
In 1963, North Carolina poet Henry Beam published a collection of poems supposedly saved from a Nazi slave labor camp. The authorship controversy that followed cost Henry his university teaching position and forced the poet into decades of silence. Thirty-four years after the poems’ publication, Henry breaks that silence when he begins telling grad student Rachel Singer the story of his study year in Paris, how the naïve young American became entangled with fiery right-wing politician Renard Marcotte, his love affair with the shopgirl Eugenié and his unnerving encounter with the enigmatic René, the Frenchman Henry claims gave him the poems. A Stone for Bread moves back and forth in time from 1997 North Carolina to post-World War I France, to Paris in the mid-1950’s and into the horror of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.
Absolution tells the story of Maggie Delaney, an idealistic wife and mother whose world implodes when her husband is murdered in a seemingly random act. When Maggie attempts to find out what really happened, her search leads her back to her Carolina roots and through the streets of modern-day Boston. In the jungles of Southeast Asia, she uncovers a legacy of secrets about the man she thought she knew – and the troubled world they shared as they came of age in America’s turbulent sixties.
The novel won the 2007 Novello Press Literary Award. It also received Independent Publisher‘s Gold Award for Best Fiction, Southeast Region, and was a Finalist for Foreword Magazine’s 2007 Novel of the Year. In 2020, It was a Legacy finalist in the Eric Hoffer Awards.
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Chatting about A Stone for Bread. To hear the interview go to WUNC.
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Was your husband in Vietnam? Have you ever been to Vietnam? Is Maggie’s story your story? Did you live in…
“In this fierce and impressive debut, Miriam Herin asks us to open our eyes wide to the hopes, failure, compassion,…
Among the thorny truths that haunt Miriam Herin’s gripping, all-too human novel, Absolution, is that no war is ever over when…
“Absolution delicately and skillfully depicts an anguished clash between secrets and justice in the heart of Maggie Delaney, a grieving…
War often divides families, and in Miriam Herin’s timely first novel, “Absolution,” the effects of Vietnam cast a long shadow…
“Absolution entertains with a solid story populated by compelling characters. The writing style is straightforward, crisp and pitch-perfect.” Matthew Fiander,…
“Absolution grips and holds like popular fiction, but its themes and complexity encourage the reader to slow down…. “Absolution” is…
“Part murder mystery, part legal thriller, part reflection on the Vietnam War in light of current wars, this novel finds…
“This impressive Novello Literary Award–winning debut skillfully combines a contemporary courtroom thriller with a subtle look back at the competing…
Miriam Herin’s first novel, Absolution, is a well-crafted, well-told tale that deals with the present-day murder of a Vietnam veteran…