Because Mother Liked to Dance

About the Book

Because Mother Liked to Dance is the story of the Cullen family. Forced to leave New York City after his father´s death, Nick Cullen brings his wife Joanna and their two children to New Jersey and attempts to establish an independent union at his new place of work. Joanna accompanies Nick reluctantly. She enjoys city life, has an excellent job there and has no wish to live next door to her mother Louise, a hard, bitter woman. Emotionally guarded, a detached mother figure, Joanna slowly reveals her past life, and we learn about events she´s kept secret and of the man she might have chosen. Set in New York City and New Jersey during the 1950´s, narrated by the daughter Meg, Because Mother Liked To Dance chronicles, in poignant, humorous and, at times, harsh episodes, how a family copes with stress brought on by change, and how dissension in family relationships develops over time ... and is resolved.

About the Author

Joan Vincent was born in New York City. She attended Trinity College in Hartford, CT, where she received the John Curtis Underwood Memorial Prize for poetry. Vincent's poems have been published in Trinity's Review and in Hartford Women.

She engaged in a mentor relation-ship with Carol Shields, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Stone Diaries and has attended fiction-writing conferences with authors Ernest Hebert and Jeannette Turner Hospital as workshop leaders.

Vincent also has a career in Design, working for corporations and architectural firms. She lives with her husband in northeastern Connecticut and Providence, Rhode Island. Because Mother Liked To Dance is her first novel. She is working on a new book about relationships between characters involved in the renovation of a 19th century office building.