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WORK TITLE: Velvet Spring
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.dedereed.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: American
Divides her time between New York, Colorado, Maryland, and France.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Cincinnati, OH.
EDUCATION:San Francisco Art Institute; University of Colorado. Has attended workshops at Maine Media Workshops; Anderson Ranch; Aspen Writers Conference; Writers Studio in New York.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Photographer. Writer.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Dede Reed is a writer and photographer. Reed was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and attended the San Francisco Art Institute and the University of Colorado. She has attended workshops at Maine Media Workshops, Anderson Ranch, the Aspen Writers Conference, and the Writers Studio in New York.
Reed’s photographic style incorporates classical compositions and saturated light, evocative of painterly monoprints. She has been represented by Bonni Benrubi and The Kathryn Markel Gallery in New York City, Joel Soroka Gallery in Aspen, Colorado, Emma Molina Gallery in Monterrey, Mexico, and Ten High Street Gallery in Camden, Maine.
Reed has lived in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Mexico, Singapore, and France. She splits her time between New York, Colorado, Maryland, and France.
Velvet Spring, a work of fiction, depicts life in Soviets occupied Czechoslovakia in the years leading up to the Velvet Revolution of 1989. The book is told in four parts and focuses primarily on the lives of four women.
The book opens with the story of Zofie, a baby girl abandoned on a doorstep in August 1968. The owner of the doorstep, Czechoslovakian peasant Uršula, takes the baby in and raises her. Uršula’s emotionless demeanor does not make for a loving mother, and Zofie grows up constantly feeling like an outsider. It is only when her classmate, Katarina, takes Zofie to her family’s summer cottage for a summer that the girl experiences true familial love.
The next section is told in letters, written by Uršula to her adopted daughter. The reasons for her coldness are revealed through this correspondence, and the reader comes to understand why she is unable to show warmth.
Part three focuses on Zofie’s birth mother, Maria. Maria describes a loving childhood that darkened with the death of her mother. Her father fell into a deep depression, the repercussions of which affected the whole family. Maria found escape through love and a pregnancy. We learn that Maria leaves young Zofie in Czechoslovakia for a few days to visit Vienna. When she tries to return, the Soviets have invaded the country, and Maria is not permitted re-entrance. The final section describes Zofie’s life with her daughter, Nataša, whom she adopted after the child’s parents died.
Tamara Benson in San Francisco Book Review website wrote: “Reed beautifully constructs characters and weaves an intricate and poignant web in which they all connect.” Jessica Tingling in Manhattan Book Review website wrote: Velvet Spring “describes the touching, enduring link between mothers and daughters,” while a contributor to Kirkus Reviews described the book as “a rich, deeply felt, but never sentimental novel.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2018, review of Velvet Spring.
ONLINE
Manhattan Book Review, https://manhattanbookreview.com/ (February 1, 2018), Jessica Tingling, review of Velvet Spring.
San Francisco Book Review, https://sanfranciscobookreview.com/ (February 1, 2018), Tamara Benson, review of Velvet Spring.
Dede Reed
Photography and Books
Dede Reed is a photographer and writer. Her black and white photographs are grounded in classical compositions. Her palladium portraits, landscapes, and still life images are imbued with saturated light, and her color studies are reminiscent of painterly monoprints. Dede’s photography influences range from Tina Modotti and Paul Strand to Flor Garduño. Her written works have been inspired by Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather, W.G. Sebald, and James Salter. She admires Elena Ferrante, Rachel Cusk, and Patti Smith, among many other contemporary writers.
Dede’s first novel, Velvet Spring, a book about four generations of women who live in Czechoslovakia during the communist era, is available on Amazon. Her 2007 memoir, Through the Narrows, tells the stories of summers on an Adirondack Lake. Her third book, Other Lives, short stories that take place in Mexico, was published in March 2018.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Dede attended The San Francisco Art Institute and the University of Colorado. She has studied at Maine Media Workshops, Anderson Ranch, The Aspen Writers Conference, and The Writers Studio in New York. She has lived in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Mexico, Singapore, and France. She divides her time between New York, Colorado, Maryland, and France.
Dede has been represented by Bonni Benrubi and The Kathryn Markel Gallery in New York City, Joel Soroka Gallery in Aspen, Colorado, Emma Molina Gallery in Monterrey, Mexico, and Ten High Street Gallery in Camden, Maine.
Private Collections:
The Whitney Museum
Solo and Group Photographic Exhibitions:
The Hawthorne Gallery, Winston Salem N.C. 2008
The Barn Gallery, Lenox, Massachusetts 2008
De Paul Gallery, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 2008
Ten High Street, Camden, Maine 2008
The Beadleston Gallery, New York 2001
Emma Molina Gallery, Monterrey, Mexico 2000
Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York, New York 1999
Owens-Dewey Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico 1997
Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York, New York 1996
Mayans Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico 1995
Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, Oregon 1995
Alley Café Gallery, Aspen, Colorado 1994
For photography inquiries: dedereed@mac.com
Dede Reed is a photographer and writer. In 2007, she published an autobiography, Through the Narrows. Her most recent book, Velvet Spring, is a work of fiction that takes place in the communist era of Czechoslovakia. Her next book, Other Lives, was published in March 2018.
Dede has been represented by Bonni Benrubi and Kathryn Markel Gallery in New York City, and her work has shown in galleries across North America. She was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and divides her time between Basalt, Colorado, New York City, France and the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
Private Collection:
The Whitney Museum
https://www.dedereed.com/
Reed, Dede: VELVET SPRING
Kirkus Reviews. (Feb. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Reed, Dede VELVET SPRING CreateSpace (Indie Fiction) $9.95 9, 30 ISBN: 978-1-977763-40-2
Reed's debut novel explores how the disruptions of history affect the interconnected lives of several women in communist Czechoslovakia.
In August 1968, during a Soviet invasion, a baby girl is left outside a peasant woman's house in Czechoslovakia, the name "Zofie" embroidered on her blanket. The woman, Ur?ula, takes her in. When Zofie is 11, a Communist Party apparatchik notes her intelligence, offers to help her learn German, and lends her books, which are transformative. Zofie experiences familial warmth for the first time when she's invited to her classmate Katarina Vacek's summer cottage, where she spends three summers. Later educated in Prague, Zofie immerses herself in its culture, becoming a translator for the education ministry, which becomes less subject to censorship as communism loses its grip. Next, Ur?ula tells her brief story: She didn't speak until she was 8--her muteness a kind of spell that a circus dwarf breaks by asking her name and age. The next section tells the heartbreaking tale of Zofie's mother, Maria, who's separated from her baby daughter by the invasion. Now married and living in Wales with her son, Maria's inquiries regarding Zofie's location have led to nothing, and she must live with sorrow, regret, and uncertainty. The novel then takes up Zofie's story again, as well as that of Nata?a, Katarina's orphaned daughter, whom Zofie takes in; painting helps Nata?a heal her broken memories. Throughout this novel, Reed renders her characters' different first-person points of view with the toughness and delicacy of a dancer en pointe whose grace belies a foundation of pain. Although tragedy runs through the broken mother-daughter relationships, each character manages to find meaning and beauty in the world through art. Even Ur?ula, whose words are so often trapped within herself, vividly remembers making a mobile out of string, a dead butterfly, feathers, and other bits and pieces. Not that art is easy; Zofie, for example, risks much when working on samizdat (banned literature), and it's photography that takes Maria out of the country at a crucial time. Reed handles such ironies with intelligence and skill in this fine debut.
A rich, deeply felt, but never sentimental novel.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Reed, Dede: VELVET SPRING." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527248069/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=958004a6. Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A527248069
Velvet Spring
We rated this book:
$9.95
The Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and began their twenty-year communist rule of that country. To say that lives were changed irrevocably would be a drastic understatement.
Told in four sections, Dede Reed’s debut novel, Velvet Spring, begins in the years leading up to the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and focuses on the interconnected lives of four women who must find a way to navigate through life in such tumultuous conditions.
In the first section, we are introduced to Zofie. Left on the doorstep of Uršula, a peasant woman, with nothing but a blanket with her name embroidered on it, Zofie is taken in and cared for but not, in her mind, really loved or wanted. Zofie grows up, goes to school, and makes friends, always feeling like an outsider no matter where she is. One particular friend, Katrina, invites her to her summer house to stay with her family, which results in relationships and experiences that change her life forever.
Next, we hear Uršula’s story, told in letters to Zofie in a staccato voice that is beautifully representative of the woman. Emotions are no easier for her to express on paper than they are in person. Almost reluctantly and seemingly accidentally, she reveals so much that helps us understand her, such as the fact that she was mute until the age of eight, when a circus dwarf asked her for her name and age.
Maria, Zofie’s mother, is the next to speak, through a journal she keeps for her daughter. She tells of her idyllic childhood and the tragedies that befell her later. After the death of her mother and the resulting depression of her father, Maria finds love and becomes pregnant. She leaves her daughter for a few days to go to Vienna at her father’s request. It is 1968, and she is not permitted to return to Czechoslovakia and Zofie.
In the last two sections we are back with Zofie and Nataša, whom she adopted upon the death of her parents, Katrina and Georg.
Reed beautifully constructs characters and weaves an intricate and poignant web in which they all connect. The stories, though tragic and painful, are told with compassion and compel the reader to continue in the hope of, if not a happy ending, a kind one. Reed’s conclusion gives us just that and left this reader with a smile and the feeling that these wonderful women would finally be given the peace they so much deserve.
editor
Chris Hayden been working at City Book Review since 2012, so that makes him the keeper of knowledge. He manages the office and book reviewers (all 200 of them!), which is no small feat. If you’re looking at the book reviews here, you’re seeing them because he sent the books out for review. Without him, this place would fall apart, because no one else in the office knows how to use the postage machine. Two words: job security.
Reviewed By: Tamara Benson
Author Dede Reed
Star Count 5/5
Format Trade
Page Count 226 pages
Publisher CreateSpace
Publish Date 2017-Oct-30
ISBN 9781977763402
Amazon Buy this Book
Issue February 2018
Category Historical Fiction
Velvet Spring
We rated this book:
$9.95
Velvet Spring by Dede Reed describes the touching, enduring link between mothers and daughters over the span of decades, across countries. Reed’s portrayal encapsulates the monumental, lasting imprint mothers and daughters leave on each other’s souls despite distance, time, and direct bloodline. Velvet Spring captures the inadvertent way some women become mothers as well as how some daughters find themselves seeking their mothers. Some mothers develop like Uršula, who adopted her daughter, and disclose, “At your first cry, I did not want you…After I softened. I would care for you. For a day, a week, forever.” Whereas other mothers, such as Maria, fall in love at first sight, expressing, “You’d gaze up at me, and I of course could not stop looking at you. Those first few days, the following weeks, the next months are memories I’ve sealed up perfectly like a winter scene in a globe that I need only rotate in my hand and feelings like snow.” Reed’s description thoughtfully demonstrates how mothers evolve in their own way in spite of intention and expectations. Not all women deliberately elect for or willingly relinquish the role of motherhood, as demonstrated in Reed’s work. Life’s unexpected twists and turns complicate and pleasantly surprise these relationships. These unpredictable circumstances leave a lasting imprint on daughters that they carry throughout life. Moreover, Velvet Spring considers how daughters long for and mimic their mothers. This simulation surfaces in the daughters’ care of their homes as well as their expressive artistry. Readers will lovingly appreciate the longing some daughters feel for their mothers. To fondly lament, “I can’t explain that I am looking for you in those paintings, and sometimes even begin to imagine you coming out of the woods, or walking through fields or sitting by the river.” Reed’s poetic language exceptionally captures the tenderness of mother-daughter relationships. To round out the work, Reed aptly merges attention-grabbing historical, geographic, and artistic elements that will intrigue and enchant readers. Incorporating the cityscapes and landscapes of several countries, Reed paints an elegant picture as the backdrop of this novel. Perfect for those young and old, Velvet Spring encapsulates a beautiful work that readers will return to again and again over the years, each time gaining new insight into maternal and familial relationships.
Reviewed By: Jessica Tingling
Author Dede Reed
Star Count 5/5
Format Trade
Page Count 226 pages
Publisher CreateSpace
Publish Date 2017-Oct-30
ISBN 9781977763402
Amazon Buy this Book
Issue February 2018
Category Modern Literature