“. . . woven with unbearable frustrations and fears, [Queen for a Day] ultimately reveals lives that grow in love, acceptance and gratitude. It is a story that each of us needs to read.” Karen Lerhman Bloch, LA Jewish Journal

“An engrossing and compassionate collection showing motherhood in its most unrelenting form. ” (Kirkus,starred review)

“An inherently compelling, and exceptionally well-written novel by an author with a genuine flair for narrative storytelling and the creation of memorable characters, Maxine Rosaler’s “Queen for a Day” is an extraordinary read from beginning to end.” Midwest Book Reviews

Raw, candid and deftly written, Queen for a Day crackles with trenchant observations and edgy gallows humor. Though Mimi makes choices the reader will question, we never doubt the deep, fierce love she feels for her son. Liane Kupferberg Carter, The Jewish Book Council

“Rosaler writes of Mimi’s ongoing struggle from firsthand experience and instills in her protagonist such fierce resolve to do all she can for her son while simultaneously limning awkward episodes with ironic humor; the reader becomes immersed in all that the diagnosis of autism in one’s child must entail.”  Booklist

“Few have written fiction about these situations, and Rosaler does so with humor, wisdom and a big heart. She reveals much about love and marriage and New York life. ” New York Jewish Week

“It’s about time someone wrote a humorous novel that shines a light on the plight of parents who are coping with unbearable stress and impossible challenges while raising their amazing,  special-needs kids.” New York Parenting

“The title, taken from the 1950s reality TV show that pitted downtrodden housewives against one another for prizes, hints at Rosaler’s ironic humor. Mimi and her friends (she has time only for mothers who share her desperate quest for a better life for their kids) subtly compare successes. At times Mimi and Jake “forget to hate each other” in their shared love for Danny. These stories are not happy, but are a testament to resilience and perseverance, and a glance into lives that many are spared.” Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco Shelf-awareness.com

“Built from individual stories with quick starts and stops, Queen For a Day falls together like the pieces of a most extraordinary jigsaw puzzle. It’s a book that brings healing through its capacity to knit together the chaotic moments of life lived with and for people on the spectrum.”  Benjamin Ludwig author of Ginny Moon

“Maxine Rosaler’s stories are both hard-edged and comic, both laced with despair and hopeful against all expectation. New York City is the setting, a struggle to prosper in the face of bad choices and deeply ingrained perversity is the theme.   Constant, however, is a narrative voice that proves irresistible, and a craftsman’s approach to the construction of these contemporary parables.” C. Michael Curtis, Fiction Editor, The Atlantic

“Queen for a Day,” by Maxine Rosaler, is a peacetime war novel. It is not about a shooting war; it is about families who live with autism. The book is knowing and bitter and humane, which sometimes means funny. What Rosaler’s characters endure, veterans would find familiar: shock, trauma, waste, greed, absurdities and ironies.” Allen Boyer, Hotty Toddy

“If you’re looking for a heart-warming, inspirational account of saintly parents raising an autistic child, QUEEN FOR A DAY isn’t the book for you. Instead, what Maxine Rosaler offers us is the gut-heaving, throat-choking, darkly comic truth–about parenthood, marriage, love, rage, and hard-won survival. Here is life as it was actually lived in twentieth-century New York, in all its profane, crazy-making, transcendent glory.” Eileen Pollack, Author of The Bible of Dirty Jokes.

“Maxine Rosaler’s novel in stories is sharply observant and deeply poignant, yet at times so darkly humorous that the reader will laugh out loud. Queen for a Day is unlike anything you’ve read before, and is absolutely unforgettable.”  Marian Thurm, author of Today is Not Your Day, Editors’ Choice, New York Times Book Review

“These stories speak eloquently to the loneliness and isolation that can be an intrinsic part of raising a child with a disability. With unsentimental candor and edgy humor, Maxine Rosaler describes the surreal situations these mothers encounter, but she also reveals glimpses of the deep love and against all odds dreams these women have for their children.”  Marianne Leone, author of JESSE, a Mother’s Story of Grief, Grace and Everyday Bliss

“QUEEN FOR A DAY is a constellation of stories forming a vibrant novel about maternal love, its struggles, its ambivalence, and, ultimately, its persistence. Each is from the perspective of a mother in crisis, and each moves us in a profoundly different way. The stories’ shifting points of view create moments of dissonance and also of great empathy. Mothers who otherwise have nothing in common are brought together, often with sudden intimacy, through the challenges of their children. QUEEN FOR A DAY poignantly evokes a maternal dance between denial and celebration.”  Hilary Reyl, author of Kids Like Us

“I was both moved and impressed by this novel, and the intelligence and sympathy with which the author presents her afflicted characters.”  Alison Lurie, Pulitzer-prize winning author of Foreign Affairs and The Language of Houses

 “Queen for a Day is a compelling collection that explores the terror and denial parents experience when realizing their child is “different” in linked stories that are tender, unflinchingly honest, and at times, chortle-out-loud funny. The book takes us on a journey from Danny’s early years to his teen years, peopled with idiosyncratic characters and events (a doomed Bar Mitzvah party and an apple-picking expedition gone bad)  that allow us to see Danny and his loving but star-crossed parents, Mimi and Jake, from a variety of perspectives.  Maxine Rosaler deals with a difficult subject in deft and graceful prose that make everything from a trip to the doctor’s office to wheeling a broken grocery cart down a NYC sidewalk feel like an adventure fraught with danger and wonder. I loved this book–read it in two sittings.”  Garnett Kilberg Cohen, Author of Swarm to Glory, a Collection of Short Stories.

“Maxine Rosaler lays bare the turmoil of raising and loving a special needs child while navigating fraught adult relationships and nightmarish bureaucracies. There are no saints or queens here, just real, aching women in all their complexity. These artfully linked stories are at once biting and tender. ”  Dawn Raffel, author of The Strange Case of Dr. Couney

“The stories in Maxine Rosaler’s  Queen for a Day are sharp and wonderfully off-kilter, filled with anguish and dark humor and a quiet, unmistakable pulse of hope. Rosaler’s depiction of heartbreak and its flip side, fierce love, is unsparing and complex, and something to which we all can relate. Ellen Umansky, author of The Fortunate Ones
Everyone who has experienced the system of disability education, services, and healthcare has a story.  With dark humor, irony, and compassion, Maxine Rosaler’s Queen for a Day recognizes that there are many sides to a story.  There are no heroes and villains here, but ordinary people trying to live on with the pettiness, routines, and fleeting victories of everyday life.  Compelling and sharply written, this collection is a must-read for parents, educators, and service providers, as well as anyone who just loves a good story. ”  Rachel Adams, author of Raising Henry

“Maxine Rosaler makes Mimi’s story come alive with humor, hard-won wisdom, and unflinching honesty. Queen for a Day is a closely observed, complex portrait of motherhood, where love and frustration, tenderness and bewilderment, are inextricably intertwined.”  Caitlin Horrocks, fiction editor, The Kenyon Review

“Queen for a Day reminds us that in family life, the stakes are always high. At the center of this beguiling novel is Mimi Slavitt: manager of the Slavitts’ modest income, frequent opponent of her husband, Jake, and mother to autistic Danny. Mimi is the best advocate that Danny could have: resourceful, fierce, and tenacious, with a voice that’s larger than life.”  Evelyn Somers, Associate Editor, the Missouri Review

“Built from individual stories with quick starts and stops, Queen For a Day falls together like the pieces of a most extraordinary jigsaw puzzle. It’s a book that brings healing through its capacity to knit together the chaotic moments of life lived with and for people on the spectrum. ”  Benjamin Ludwig, author of Ginny Moon

“Queen for a Day is poignant and funny, the images startling, and the characters real. Rosaler’s facility is with the narrative surprise, and the complex and conflicting emotions that reveal who we are. All throughout she exhibits an authority on her subject that carries us through from beginning to end in the confident hands of this capable storyteller.”Phong Nguyen, Author of The Adventures of Joe Harper, fiction editor Pleiades

“Queen for a Day crackles with insight, energy, and New York City wit.  Maxine Rosaler’s novel in stories revolves around an odd sorority of mothers brought together–and sometimes apart–by their autistic children. Rosaler is both compassionate and wonderfully unsentimental in her portrayal of their fear and fury, longing and isolation.  She is also really good at capturing the random bursts of connection so endemic to New York City street life, and her take on the Kafkaesque bureaucracy otherwise known as the Department of Education is hilarious.  I loved this book and recommend it highly, not only to parents dealing with autism, but to anyone who enjoys gritty, funny, heartbreaking, and ultimately affirming stories of modern family life. ” Eliza Factor, author of Strange Beauty.

“Maxine Rosaler’s “novel in stories” resembles Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried,   except rather than surviving an absurd and unjust war, the burden here is one of mothering an autistic child.  Like O’Brien, Rosaler explores the mettle and morality of Mimi Slavitt on the “battlefield of her existence”—as she seeks help for her son, and as her story is set off against other stories of different mothers with handicapped children.  The failures of our institutions, especially schools, to confront special needs are one common minefield; and the dream of cures another.  Rosaler continues throughout to plumb both Mimi’s humanity and that of her son Danny.  In all, the writing is generously unsentimental, spiritually probing and filled with piercing intimacies.” DeWitt Henry,  Founding Editor of Ploughshares, author of Sweet Marjoram: Notes and Essays

“As one of those crazy mothers who has an autistic child, I have read many books by other mothers in the same boat. The message of these books is generally, ‘Yes, my darling child is disabled [or ‘differently abled’ or ‘special’], but he has taught me so much; he is such a gift; he has changed my life for the better, etc., etc.’ Maxine Rosaler cuts through the crap and tells the story that these other mothers should have told if they’d been honest with themselves. Rosaler is brutally honest, even if her heroine, Mimi Slaviitt, starts off her mothering experience in a state of denial. But once Mimi gets on the honesty bandwagon, she doesn’t step off—she is honest about her autistic son’s challenges, the turbulent state of her marriage, and her own shortcomings. Mimi tries hard to get you to dislike her, but that brutal honesty and humility make you like her anyway. She is an authentic character who is baring her soul, and you naturally feel drawn to her. There is no Disney ending to the story, but it is uplifting nevertheless—in a way you don’t expect. Even if you know nothing about autism, this book will make you laugh, cry, and sometimes turn the pages as fast as you can to see what will happen next.” A powerful read about a complex subject: From a reader on Amazon: 5.0 out of 5 stars