The cover of Maggie Ginsberg's debut novel Still True with two houses connected by a telephone wire lined with birds, and moody clouds in the background, and a Luis Alberto Urrea quote on the cover that says "I could stay in this story for years."

By Maggie Ginsberg

still true

The Honorable Mention Selection for the 2022 Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award

2023 Midwest Book Awards finalist, Literary/Contemporary/Historical Fiction

2023 WFWA STAR Award finalist for Outstanding Debut

One summer evening, Lib Hanson is confronted by her painful past when Matt Marlow, the forty-year-old son she abandoned as an infant, shows up on her porch. Fiercely independent, Lib has never revealed her son’s existence — or her previous marriage—to her husband, Jack. Married nearly three decades but living in separate houses (to the confusion but acceptance of their neighbors), they enjoy an ease and comfort together in small-town Anthem, Wisconsin. But Jack is a stickler for honesty, and Lib’s long-dormant secret threatens to unravel their lives.

“It’s a rare experience to feel gratitude for a book’s pleasures on nearly every page. But Maggie Ginsberg has written that book. I could stay in this story for years.”  Luis Alberto Urrea, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and bestselling author of The House of Broken Angels

Author

Maggie Ginsberg

Maggie Ginsberg is a writer, editor and author in Wisconsin. Her debut novel, Still True, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in September 2022. It is the honorable mention selection for the 2022 Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award, a 2023 Midwest Book Awards honoree and one of three finalists for the WFWA’s STAR Award for Outstanding Debut.

Maggie is now a senior editor at Madison Magazine after freelancing for city, regional and national magazines since 2006. She has published hundreds of articles throughout her career, earning numerous honors from the City Regional Magazine Association, the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the Milwaukee Press Club.

She was born in Minnesota and has lived in Wisconsin since 1985.

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Not since Kent Haruf have I read an author so skilled at capturing the nuance and complexity of small-town life with empathy and respect.

– Christina Clancy

author of The Second Home and Shoulder Season
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Even as each of its characters curates a careful present, the shadows of the past creep up to confront them. When those realities collide, the result is troubling, affecting and deeply true.

– Jacquelyn Mitchard

bestelling author of The Deep End of the Ocean
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Ginsberg’s prose is dreamy and rhapsodic and even as her characters make dreadful mistakes, she always treats them with profound decency and empathy.

– Nickolas Butler

bestselling author of Shotgun Lovesongs and Little Faith
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