What Fell on Us
She counts what is in the air for a living. On the twelfth of October 1957 she drives past six farms with children in them to reach her sister’s.
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Nell Ambrose
Writes twentieth-century historical fiction drawn from the record
Nell Ambrose writes twentieth-century historical fiction about the moment a public decision arrives in a private kitchen. She works in short chapters, in the present tense, and does not believe in villains. What Fell on Us is her first novel; The Rooms We Owe, set in Texas City in 1947, is coming soon.
- Drawn from the record.
- Short chapters, present tense.
- No villains.
Biography
Documented, then forgotten.
Nell Ambrose writes twentieth-century historical fiction about the moment a public decision arrives in a private kitchen. She is drawn to events that were fully documented and then comprehensively forgotten, and to the people who were told what they needed to know a little later than they needed to know it. She writes in short chapters, in the present tense, and she does not believe in villains. What Fell on Us, her first novel, began with a single line in a radiological-protection paper: that in the autumn of 1957 three thousand tons of Cumberland milk were diluted and poured into the Irish Sea.
The Rooms We Owe, her second, moves the question across an ocean and ten years back: two sisters, a boarding house and the weeks after the 1947 Texas City explosion, when every promise of shelter required somebody’s labor.
What you can count on
The signature under every Nell Ambrose novel
- 01
Drawn from the record
Every novel begins with something that was fully documented and then comprehensively forgotten. The author’s note says what is on the record and what is not.
- 02
A public decision, a private kitchen
The history is real; the story is the family it arrived in, and what they were told a little later than they needed to know it.
- 03
No villains
Every man in the chain does his job exactly as he was trained to do it, and every one of them is right. That is the problem.
- 04
Short chapters, present tense
The record is read at the speed it was written, by somebody standing in front of the thing at the moment it existed.
- 05
Nothing resolved that the record leaves open
A chronology can be accurate, in order and complete, and still not get anybody from what happened to why.
Books by Nell Ambrose
In the catalogue →Available now
Coming soon
The Rooms We Owe
In 1947 Texas, two sisters rebuild their lives around a damaged boarding house, and must decide whether love gives either woman the right to plan the other’s future.
Coming soon
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Contact
Reader mail for Nell Ambrose: nellambrose@readnovastory.com. Rights, press and permissions: contact@readnovastory.com.