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Kathleen Rooney

Biography

Kathleen Rooney

Kathleen Rooney is the nationally bestselling author of LILLIAN BOXFISH TAKES A WALK, as well as CHER AMI AND MAJOR WHITTLESEY, FROM DUST TO STARDUST and MAN OVERBOARD! She has won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from Poetry magazine and the Adam Morgan Literary Citizen Award from the Chicago Review of Books. Kathleen’s criticism can be found in The New York Times, The Minnesota Star Tribune, The Brooklyn Rail, Chicago magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books and beyond. She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay, and teaches English and creative writing at DePaul University.

Kathleen Rooney

Books by Kathleen Rooney

Man Overboard!
by Kathleen Rooney - Fiction, Humor

Patrick “Kick” Kilpatrick always has been terrified of the ocean. Drifting alone in the sea after falling (or jumping? He can’t remember as the all-inclusive drinks on the cruise he was taking with his extended family were, well, inclusive), Kick must survive. As the waves crash over him, so too do the thoughts and memories of just how he got there. A Thanksgiving cruise with an obnoxious brother-in-law he has to bite his tongue to keep from screaming at. A father who gives the Great Santini a run for his money. And a mother who already left the family boat, so to speak, a long time ago. His family may be complicated, and the pains of life may seem unbearable --- infuriating enough to leap from the deck --- but maybe the will to survive is stronger.

From Dust to Stardust
by Kathleen Rooney - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

Chicago, 1916. Doreen O’Dare is 14 years old when she hops a Hollywood-bound train with her beloved Irish grandmother. Within a decade, her trademark bob and insouciant charm make her the preeminent movie flapper of the Jazz Age. But her success story masks one of relentless ambition, tragedy and the secrets of a dangerous marriage. Her professional life in flux, Doreen trades one dream for another. She pours her wealth and creative energy into a singular achievement: the construction of a one-ton miniature Fairy Castle, the likes of which the world has never seen. So begins Doreen’s public tour to lift the nation’s spirits during the Great Depression --- and a personal journey worth remembering.

Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey
by Kathleen Rooney - Fiction, Historical Fiction

From the green countryside of England and the gray canyons of Wall Street come two unlikely heroes: one a pigeon and the other a soldier. Answering the call to serve in the war to end all wars, neither Cher Ami, the messenger bird, nor Charles Whittlesey, the army officer, can anticipate how their lives will briefly intersect in a chaotic battle in the forests of France, where their wills will be tested, their fates will be shaped, and their lives will emerge forever altered.

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
by Kathleen Rooney - Fiction

She took 1930s New York by storm, working her way up writing copy for R.H. Macy’s to become the highest paid advertising woman in the country. Now it’s the last night of 1984 and Lillian, 85 years old but just as sharp and savvy as ever, is on her way to a party. It’s chilly enough out for her mink coat, and Manhattan is grittier now, but the quick-tongued poetess has never been one to scare easily. On a walk that takes her over 10 miles around the city, she meets bartenders, bodega clerks, security guards, criminals, children, parents and parents-to-be, while reviewing a life of excitement and adversity, passion and heartbreak, illuminating all the ways New York has changed --- and has not.