Take Daily As Needed

by Kathryn Trueblood

University of New Mexico Press
September 2019, 200 Pages

ISBN 13: 978-0-8263-6096-0, paperback $19.95

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Maeve Beaufort’s family is messy and complicated, rife with competing demands, difficult compromises, and on-the-spot judgment calls.  Her father is spending his retirement on high-ticket items he doesn’t need and doesn’t remember ordering, her children’s teachers are suggesting medication, and her mood-swinging mother is threatening to move in. How much pressure can she withstand before she cracks? Or her family breaks? Or her health crashes? Welcome to Maeve’s life. She is the single mother of Noelle, who has anaphylactic reactions to nuts, and Norm, a nonconformist child whom everyone wants to diagnose. Newly diagnosed herself with Crohn’s disease, Maeve feels as though she is failing herself, her parents, and her children. But with spirit and determination—and a healthy dose of survival humor—she gives it her best go. Anyone who has ever felt overwhelmed, underappreciated, underpaid, and underwater will find a kindred spirit in Maeve, who does the best she can to make the world a little bit better and a little more functional for those around her.

About The Author

Kathryn Trueblood was awarded the 2013 Goldenberg Prize for Fiction from the Bellevue Literary Review and the 2011 Red Hen Press Short Story Award. Her work is situated firmly in the medical humanities. Her new novel, Take Daily As Needed, treats parenting while chronically ill with the desperado humor the subject deserves (published September 2019 from the University of New Mexico Press) while her previous novel, The Baby Lottery, dealt with the repercussions of infertility in a female friend group (a Book Sense Pick in 2007). Her story collection, The Sperm Donor’s Daughter, takes a look at assisted reproduction and received a Special Mention for the Pushcart Prize in 2000. Trueblood’s stories and articles have been published in Poets & Writers Magazine, the Medical Literary Messenger, Blood and Thunder, The Los Angeles Review, Glimmer Train, The Seattle Review, Zyzzyva, and others. She is a professor of English at Western Washington University and a member of the Red Badge Project, a non-profit organization serving active duty soldiers and veterans in Washington through the use of storytelling techniques.