Praise for Take Daily as Needed by Kathryn Trueblood

“A writer whose fiction has largely focused on the impact that medical intervention, technology, and culture has on our lives, Trueblood’s latest novel follows Maeve, a chronically ill single mother of two demanding kids. Her father is in the early stages of dementia and her mother has volatile mood swings. Anyone who has ever tried to hold it all together when there is too much to do will relate to Maeve’s plight.”
-BuzzFeed News, Wendy J. Fox

“This novel in stories follows Maeve Beaufort through the maze of adulthood. Early stories chronicle ambulance rides for her highly allergic daughter; a diagnosis of Asperger’s for her elementary-age son; and a divorce from her children’s father….Later in the novel, Maeve’s aging parents try her nerves and break her heart, and a long battle with Crohn’s disease makes it difficult to hold down a job. Teenage children present the most colossal challenge of all: they force Maeve to reckon with the mistakes of her past. Trueblood makes great use of the unconventional form, molding Maeve’s story into a vivid portrait of independent womanhood.”
-Booklist, Courtney Eathorne

“The solid latest from Trueblood (The Baby Lottery) is a novel in nonlinear stories told from the perspective of Maeve, a mother of two and paralegal in Washington State dealing with Crohn’s disease. Throughout, Trueblood confidently sculpts her protagonist….Readers will appreciate the character wrinkles each new story turns up.”
-Publishers Weekly

“Take Daily as Needed explores chronic illness and its effect upon both those who are ill and their loved ones. Trueblood engagingly describes many aspects of family life in a manner that is authentic, honest, and often uncomfortable. The characters and relationships are multifaceted and the reader is allowed to witness to the love, anger, frustration, change and resilience in a way that rings true to life.”
-Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Literature, Maura Madden

“We first meet her in the back of an ambulance as her fourteen-month-old daughter, Noelle, is being rushed to the hospital after having an anaphylactic reaction to peanuts. This emergency, where life and death hang in the balance, becomes a metaphor for Maeve’s rollercoaster existence. After all, she bears the name of a figure in popular Irish legend, a warrior queen. Maeve’s challenge is to learn how to rule her unruly household as a warrior, a loving, protective queen.”
-Mom Egg Review, Nancy Gerber

“Never a false note, never a line of dialogue that didn’t feel heartbreakingly real, the work seems to open a seam in the experience of parenting that has never been pulled open before.”
—Ashley Shelby, author of South Pole Station: A Novel

“Take Daily as Needed crosses and occupies the lives of readers in many generations from Baby Boomers to Gen X to Gen Y and Millennials: in short anyone who is a parent, has a parent, or has been in a relationship that requires management, healing, sacrifice, and/or emotional intelligence.”
—Shawn Wong, author of American Knees

“[These] stories offer a compelling look into the sadly common and unfair expectation that women who physically and mentally care for children and aging parents ought to be the ones who compromise their own intellectual and professional passions.”
—Kate Gale, author of The Goldilocks Zone

Short story “The No-Tell Hotel,” winner of the 2013 Goldenberg Prize for Fiction from Bellevue Literary Review

Short story “Fuck You! Till Next Christmas,” winner of the 2011 Red Hen Press Short Story Award

Kathryn Trueblood, Professor/Writer, Western Washington University

Trueblk@wwu.edu, www.kathryntrueblood.com

Take Daily As Needed, University of New Mexico Press, unmpress.com