Book Tour with my Mom, Day Three

Welcome to Wisconsin! Plus Very Fancy News.

If you are a casual reader of mine, you may not know this key fact about my family: they are all from Wisconsin. That’s why my mom looks like this at a plate of bratwurst and kielbasa and cheese curds.

And also at the Bronze Fonz. (Bronz Fonz?) Either way, it’s Henry Winkler made out of metal.

We started the day at the school my mother went to from age 3-18. Did they break out a yearbook? They did. Not to brag, but Susie was a varsity cheerleader.

Elyse Marshall is the best publicist in children’s books, full stop. So good that I almost believed her when she said she was coming to Wisconsin to hang out with us and not for the frozen custard.

The real reason Elyse came to Wisconsin, Kopps frozen custard.

Anyway, my mom’s school was incredible, and had a full-on theater for us to ham it up in.

Just picture 400 adorable children laughing at our every word.

This is us taking a selfie that is GREAT and shows the whole auditorium but it also shows the faces of four hundred children who don’t belong to us, so instead, just use your imagination.

#Facts.

Onto the next school! Tell me it’s Hat Day in Wisconsin without telling me it’s Hat Day in Wisconsin.

We ended the day at Boswell’s, one of my favorite bookstores in the country. Daniel counts the days they’ve been open—it’s five thousand and something—which really spoke to my heart. This is my mom and her goose and Ann, her oldest friend. They both turn 80 this year. That is a good life goal, I think—to be able to laugh like this with your oldest friend. While holding an upside down stuffed goose. In your monogrammed vintage Stan Ray custom-dyed suit.

This is a Spotted Cow, a beer that you can only get in Wisconsin. I had cheese curds (twice), I had a brat, I had frozen custard, I had this beer. Not bad. It was an epic, long, exhausting day—two huge school visits, one bookstore event, driving, signing, talking.

The other thing that happened yesterday is that right when we got picked up in the morning by our helpful Milwaukee friend Margy, and when she and my mom were chattering happily about all the Milwaukee landmarks we were passing, and who used to live in which house, I got an email telling me that I had won a Guggenheim fellowship. From the backseat, I wrote to Ann Patchett, who called me instantly, but I hadn’t told the other people in the car yet, and so I didn’t answer. Ann emailed me the letter she’d written on my behalf, and I won’t quote the whole thing here, but what I will tell you is this—my badass sister basically told them that people who write books like mine are important too, and that they were cowardly snobs if they didn’t give it to me. I am paraphrasing! She made it sound so good! But it worked.

It is true that people who write books like mine don’t usually win stuff. In general, I am at peace with that—I watched my father struggle with this sort of thing for his whole career. Of course, he won every genre award about ten times. There aren’t any genre awards for whatever it is I write, except, I suppose, book sales. To quote Don Draper, that’s what the money is for. And yet.

I’m not sure how to describe how I feel about being awarded this generous, prestigious, fancy prize. I think it’ll take me a little while to get over the idea that they gave it to me just to be nice, because I’m nice. It feels good to be taken seriously. I am going to try to write the best book I’ve ever written, for everyone who has ever read and enjoyed one of my books, and for everyone who has never picked up one of my books because they think they’re just for women, or because sometimes they have happy endings, or whatever. Let’s fucking go.