Escape Velocity

"A potent mix of intimacy, wit, and mounting angst over the inevitability of aging, offered in crisp, seventy-word capsules of remarkable honesty. Sosin portrays a fascinating, surprising life, ending on a perfect note of hope and resilience."

-Dinty W. Moore, founding editor of Brevity

In Escape Velocity, a genre-bending constellation of 70 micro-memoirs of 70 words each, Deborah Sosin unravels a story of family entanglement with her loving but overbearing parents. Too much intrusion. Not enough space. What one therapist later dubbed "a mirage of intimacy." A feisty, perceptive girl, Sosin strains against her family's gravitational pull in search of a separate self. While navigating the confusing terrain of 1970s feminism, she endures a near-rape, enters a fraught romance with a gay man, and makes a momentous choice about an unexpected pregnancy.

Anna Hall's striking illustrations add depth and humor to the scenes, which include transformative therapy sessions, an empowering alpine road trip, a clothing-optional retreat, and some miserable midlife dates. Escape Velocity also features Sosin's poignant, often hilarious, teen diary excerpts and provocative "psychology interludes" that weave in concepts she learned as a therapist. At 70, Sosin faces the loss of both parents and the challenges-and delights-of flying solo. Escape Velocity sheds light on what it means to claim our true selves without severing our close family bonds

PRAISE FOR ESCAPE VELOCITY

"In this collection of short moments chosen from a life of confusion, resentments, mistakes, epiphanies, friendship, loss, and laughter, Deborah Sosin traces the bumpy path to becoming who she is now: a woman complete in herself-imaginative, curious, full of life, and, perhaps best, someone she can rely on. Anna Hall's illustrations are marvelous, perfect. I loved this book."

-Abigail Thomas, author of A Three Dog Life and Safekeeping

"In spare, illustrated morsels infused with psychological insights, Deborah Sosin unfurls a moving, later-in-life coming-of-age story that will resonate with many-especially those who have struggled to untangle themselves from complicated family dynamics and limiting societal expectations." 

-Sari Botton, author of And You May Find Yourself... and editor-in-chief of Oldster Magazine

"Combining the psychological insight of a therapist, the sensitivity of a poet, and the skill of an expert storyteller, Sosin has pulled off a dazzling magic trick, capturing seventy years' worth of transformation in seventy meaning-packed moments. Escape Velocity is a shimmering ode to the strength of the human spirit, and to the surprising ways our constraints can set us free."  

-Nicole Graev Lipson, author of Mothers and Other Fictional Characters