The subject of my next book always finds me. Whether it’s running into an old friend in an elevator in New York—which led me to write Loose Change, or being charmed by a brilliant rabbi to write The December Project, about how to navigate one’s last years. Even Rock Hudson, which is unlike any of my other books, happened because I was visiting my agent at the exact moment Rock’s publisher was looking for a writer, and in minutes, the deal was sealed. I walked out on the street and stopped cold. “What have I done?” I thought. “I’ve recently had a baby and Rock has AIDS.” (This was 1984, when no one was certain yet how it was transmitted.)
In most of my books, I’m telling the ongoing story of a certain generation, a cohort who were infected by the ideals of the Sixties, who believed we should make love, not war, and had a passion for improving the world.
This cohort are mostly middle class and can get emotional when they hear “Sergeant Pepper” or see a film clip of Bobby Kennedy saying, “Some people see things as they are and say, Why? I dream things that never were and say, Why not?”
My hope is that whenever you grew up, whatever generation you identify with, you’ll enjoy these intimate stories. No matter how you respond, I’d love to hear from you.
At 74, Ram Dass, who was instrumental in bringing Eastern spirituality to America, discovered he had a son he’d never known about. It was a shock for both father and son, and required Ram Dass to rethink his ideas about love and family. Author Will Blythe wrote, “This may be my favorite of Davidson’s pieces, and I’ve loved all her pieces. It has such lilt and luminosity. And comedy. Don’t miss.”
The love story of a writer and an uneducated cowboy, who have a one-night stand that, to the surprise of both, deepens and endures. Carol Muske Dukes wrote in the Washington Post: “The premise? That love humbles us in wonderful, unexpected ways, that if we believe in that mysterious wind that blows our lives, like tumbleweeds, into new shapes, we must ride blind with it.”
The international best seller that tells the story of the 60s through the lives of three women who meet in a sorority at Berkeley, then take different paths through the tumultuous events of the decade. Malcolm Cowley wrote, “Sara Davidson is the liveliest historian of her generation.” And Newsweek wrote, “Candid, courageous, poignant… She has recorded as well as anyone her generation’s ease with sex and difficulties with love.”
“Sara Davidson brings us the dialogue we dream of having: where we can place our darkest doubts and fears, our most ornery questions, in the loving embrace of a profound elder, who is grooming us patiently for what’s waiting around the inevitable corner of our lives. This is a book you can devour in one sitting and feel like you’ve just visited the most intimate of guides.”—Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, author of With Roots in Heaven and The Woman’s Kabbalah
A novel about a man and woman who are best friends, work together, and yearn for the perfect romantic partner. The Chicago Sun Times said, “Davidson has made us care deeply about her characters…I have yet to read a writer who better captures the singles dilemma.”
The most complete collection of Sara Davidson’s articles and essays, often used in university journalism and writing classes. Jane Howard wrote in the N.Y. Times Book Review, “Not many writers can cover the ground Sara Davidson does with anything like her grace, energy and humor.”
In my 50’s I hit “the narrows.” I was aged out of Hollywood, my kids left for college, and the man I loved moved out. What would I do for the next 30 years? Joan Borysenko wrote about the book, “Leap! is a travel guide into the Great Boomer Unknown. The good news is: we’re not sexually dead, we can still change the world, and we’ll get by with a little help from our friends.”
He’d just announced from a Paris hospital that he had AIDS, which unloosed the secret he’d been keeping for 30 years—he was gay. A gay movie star, with whom millions of women had fallen in love. Shortly after the announcement, Hudson asked Sara Davidson to write his true story.
You like Joan Didion? Never heard of her? In either case, you’ll enjoy reading this account of a fifty-year friendship between two writers, born 9 years apart. Didion was often shy in public, wearing large dark glasses, but Sara got to know her as few died. Intimate and inspiring.
