BeWrite Books announce the release of Magdalena Ball's debut novel Sleep Before Evening

Marianne is the apple of Grandpa's eye - but her life's rotten to the core. When her parents suddenly disconnect her grandfather-mentor's respirator, it's as though her own life support has been unplugged. And the gifted teenager from a manicured, middle-class suburb hits the city back-streets, and the skids.

Magdalena Ball's heart-wrenching novel - released on 24th July 2007 by BeWrite Books - tells the story of the teenager's struggle against a self-centred artist mother, a succession of drive-by stepfathers, her desperate escape into a nightmare of drugs and sexual degradation … and her struggle not to Sleep Before Evening.

Critically acclaimed non-fiction author, poet and reviewer Magdalena - born and raised in New York and now living in the Australian outback, via a British Oxford college - draws on her own rich life experience as a daughter and a mother to bring Marianne startlingly to life in her debut novel.

Set in and about New York, the gritty, relentless tale unfolds with the same cool detachment that motivates the central character to peel back the layers of her life and expose the painful scalding within. There are lonely vigils in city parks and subway journeys to oblivion. In the city she meets Miles, a hip musician busking the streets and playing seedy venues with a rock band.

Her new, exciting, dissolute world challenges Marianne's preconceptions about art and life. Here, in contrast to her prescribed upbringing, she finds anarchic squalor, home grown music and poetry, substance abuse, sex and crushing disappointment and fear; but above all, exhilarating personal freedom.

Addictions - of all kinds - and the redemptive power of art and music, love, loss and beauty are all explored in a young girl's difficult journey from sleep to awakening.

Early Reviews:

"The dialogue is solid and believable, and the characters live and breathe and scratch themselves. The drug scenes and the horrors of dependence are especially well-rendered." Chad Hautmann, author of Billie's Ghost

"There is so much beautiful writing here, soaring passages." Ruhama Veltfort, author of The Promised Land

"Sleep Before Evening is music. Magdalena Ball weaves the sounds of poetry with an important story, compassionately sung." Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This is the Place, and Tracings

"The writing is exquisite, without ever calling attention to itself, which is a real feat. It is a pleasure to read. The pitch is perfect, and the characters are so beautifully developed and very intriguing." Joan Schweighardt, author of Virtual Silence, Island, Homebodies and Gudrun's Tapestry

Title: Sleep Before Evening
Author: Magdalena Ball
Print ISBN: 978-1-904492-96-2
eBook ISBN: 978-1-905202-97-9
Page count: 296
Release Date: 24th July 2007
Recommended Retail Price: UK £8.99, USA $17.99, Ca $20.50, Eu €13.50, AU$21.00
BeWrite Books are available from: BeWrite Books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Angus & Robertson and other online booksellers and to order from high street bookshops
Distributors: Bertram Books, Gardners, Baker & Taylor, Ingrams
For further information and review copies, please contact: Cait Myers at BeWrite Books