Pocket Full of Poseys

Grace Tingley and Brian Posey are forty-something twins whose lives have gone in very different directions. Grace is a private school teacher in coastal Connecticut, Brian an adventure travel executive in Seattle. Grace nearly won a Rhodes Scholarship at Princeton and was a PhD candidate at Yale when an unexpected pregnancy threw her plans into a tailspin. Brian barely scraped through an obscure New England college and recently married Ella, a lively, pot-smoking realtor, after three years in an intimate relationship with a charismatic man from Jamaica.

When their mother Cinny, a widowed charter member of Woodstock Nation, is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, she opts for an early exit from life and stops eating. Grace and Brian are there for her last days in hospice care, where they learn Cinny has plans for them after she’s gone. They’re to sprinkle her ashes, mixed with their father’s, at a series of exotic locations around the globe—some remote, some challengingly public, all known and loved by the Poseys.

Joined by Grace’s husband Jack, a “recovering good ol’ boy lawyer” from Clearwater, their daughter Chelsea, recently moved in with a widower twenty years her senior, Ella, and Ella’s daughter Sage, a self-described “sixteen-year-old nihilistic feminist socialist,” Grace and Brian set off around the globe on a funereal odyssey that teaches them more about their parents’ relationship and about themselves than they find it easy to accept.

By turns hilarious, profound, jarring, and poignant, Pocket Full of Poseys bounds dizzily through New Zealand, Thailand, Italy, Switzerland, and England before pulling off at a rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike, as the last of Cinny Posey’s secrets are revealed and her survivors confront the strength of the ties that bind them all together—for worse and for better.

". . . moving . . . engaging . . . The story is fast-paced, giving the reader the feel of the family's rapid travel through Asia and Europe . . . This upbeat story triumphs thanks to its veracity and memorable characters." -- Kirkus Reviews

"Simultaneously heartwrenching and comical, Thomas Reed's novel Pocketful of Poseys follows a family from the death of their matriarch to their journey to scatter her ashes . . . Subtle and meaningful." -- Foreword Reviews

"Grippingly poignant and elegantly profound, POCKETFUL OF POSEYS will have you laughing in one moment and crying in the next. A must read for anyone who has ever experienced--life." -- Liz Maccie, author of Lessons I Never Learned at Meadowbrook Academy and film producer

"Tom Reed is a raconteur of the best and rarest kind. Turn the wi-fi off, put the kettle on, and let his storytelling carry you into the past, around the world, and down every channel of human experience from the heartbreakingly sad to the side-splittingly funny." -- Susan Choi, author of Trust Exercise

"Pocketful of Poseys is a clever dark comedy that mines heavy topics with a light touch. Reed takes us on a hilarious family trip, rife with sibling rivalry. Enjoy the ride!" -- Tess Callahan, author of April and Oliver and Dawnland

"Witty, dark, picaresque, and joyously contrarian, the saga of the Tingley family will warm your heart, make you cringe, and ultimately lift your spirit. Another outstanding novel from Thomas Reed." -- Robert Olmstead, author of Savage Country

"A poignant and entertaining family odyssey that takes the reader all across the globe." -- Virginia Pye, author of The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann

"Pocketful of Poseys is a tour de force and a tour of the world that takes you out of your comfort zone and into the shadowy secret life of a mother who sacrificed again and again." -- Teresa Sorkin, author, The Woman in the Park and Lacie's Secrets

"A funny, authentic, and contemporary story. A trip around the world turns into a journey into the past as secrets are revealed. Reed's dialogue sparkles." -- Susan Perabo, author of The Fall of Lisa Bellow

"Thomas Reed's delightful Pocketful of Poseys will have you laughing and crying from the very first chapter." -- Tullan Holmqvist, author, The Woman in the Park and Lacie's Secrets

"Emotional... and very well written. I found wanting to know what happened in Cinny's letters kept me up reading a little later than I should. Overall I really loved following them on their journey." --Heather Barksdale, author and blogger
"Moving . . . engaging . . . The story is fast-paced, giving the reader the feel of the family's rapid travel through Asia and Europe . . . This upbeat story triumphs thanks to its veracity and memorable characters."--Kirkus Reviews

Thomas Reed taught literature, film, and writing at Dickinson College for thirty years. His first novel, Seeking Hyde, grew out of courses he taught on Robert Louis Stevenson's celebrated novel and was named Finalist in the 2018 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Historical Fiction. Pocketful of Poseys draws more broadly on his experience growing up in an academic family; his education at Yale, the University of Virginia, and Oxford; years spent living in Rome and Christchurch, N.Z.; circum-global travels with his wife and children; and courageous decisions made by his mother-in-law as she faced her death. He and wife Dottie now split their year between Sarasota, Florida, and Camp Pemigewassett, a summer camp for boys in New Hampshire.

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