Books
Fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction by Denise Beck-Clark
Thirty Years Hence
“The novel provides a wonderful sense of the New York City of the 1970’s. Washington Square Park, Greenwich Village, squalid six floor walk-ups and posh co-ops, streets crowded with hustlers and cabbies, all come to life….The novel’s plot-lines are excellently weaved throughout, and … the narrative moves ever forward, with several twists and turns maintaining the interest of the reader. The characters are fully developed as the reader … identifies with their struggles and motivations. At the end of the day, Beck-Clark succeeds in spinning a true to life tale of Holocaust memory, trauma, and recovery, that is both sad and inspiring.”
Reviewed by David Keenan
The Manhattan Review
“In Beck-Clark’s debut novel, a group of troubled people try a quirky method of spiritual and psychological healing in order to get on with their lives…. Beck-Clark does a good job of developing her cast… a well-intentioned and uneven novel – but one that is worth a read.”
– Kirkus Reviews
The Zen of Forgetting
Concurrent Sentences
This is the powerfully moving true story about the lifeline forged by a man given up by society as hopeless and a compassionate woman who will not give up on him and their future.
Like “Dead Man Walking,” but with a happy ending, Concurrent Sentences is the remarkable story of one woman’s enduring belief in the inherent goodness of one of soceity’s outcasts. It chronicles the redemptive power of love and celebrates the process by which that love, along with trust and commitment, can rehabilitate someone who has been labeled irredeemable.
!! Very Good
Denise Beck-Clark, psychiatric social worker, tells story of imprisoned decorated Vietnam war vet who is freed from life sentence through persistence of the author, his fiancee, who believes in his innocence. — Today’s Books, October 26, 1999