Tomorrow Will Bring Sunday's News

Booklist Starred Review

Now in her late sixties, Peggy D’Imperio, née Finley, lies dying alone, her husband providing only minimal care, her lonely, pain-infused days buoyed by visits from her nine-year-old granddaughter, to whom she wants to tell the story of her life. But the girl comes infrequently, and Peggy has her memories to herself. Memories of being the youngest girl in a large Irish family from Philadelphia in the early twentieth century, of her preserving parents and diligent siblings, and roaming conversations with her across-the-alley friend, Lani. But mostly her recollections are of an unnamed boy, her first love, who was sent off to WWI and never returned. There are memories, too, of the hard factory work that rook her father’s life and the Spanish flu that took others. Kephart distills the precarious nature of life bracketed by the dual tragedies of that era with palpable humanity, aching depth, and timeless understanding. In this, her first novel for adults, Kephart, a prolific essayist, amorist, ad young-adult novels, mines the stories of her own grandmother’s life to bring an intimacy and immediacy to Peggy’s poignant tale, her prose’s lilting cadence echoing the sound of a heart breaking anew.

– Carol Haggas

Beth Kephart, a National Book Award finalist, is the author of nearly forty books in multiple genres. She is an award-winning teacher and poet, a widely published essayist, a paper artist, and the author of many Philadelphia-centric books, including Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River. Most recently she is the author of Wife.