Independent Publisher, Notable New Indie Book, July 2017 Featured in The Mercury News “Books By the Bay” round up of new releases "Short chapters and well-crafted dialogue make for a fast-paced story that will be enjoyed by anyone who has spent any time in or near academia.” —Booklist "A hilarious spoof of academic intrigue, Slipsliding by the Bay mirrors the societal turmoil and follies of the seventies." —Independent Publisher, Notable July Indie Book Release
"With a sharp eye for detail and a complement of perfectly peculiar characters, Barbara McDonald has devised a wonderful satire of the academic world. Her portrait of a small liberal arts college—its lecheries and larcenies—exactly conjures the atmosphere of that unique modern institution where absurdity and logic are married so closely: the campus." —Louis B. Jones, author of California’s Over, Particles and Luck, and Radiance
“Intriguing. You got me hooked with the moving plot and interesting characters. I was curious to see what mischief Gudewill and Stein would cook up. Magdalena and Lucy continued to surprise.” —Louis Owens, author of Sharpest Sight and Bone Game “Barbara McDonald’s Slipsliding by the Bay is an absorbing novel. A comedy both dark and light, it recounts an often wild search for survival of an embattled small college in 1970s San Francisco. The battle is within: a new president recruited to save the college, diverse students, faculty and alums, and most engagingly, a famed artist Sister Magdalena, whose sculptures embody a fierce war against corporate America, notably the college’s chairman of the board. McDonald’s gift for lively dialogue carries the college from one crisis to another, the denouement in suspense until the very end. An intriguing read from start to finish.” —John Boettiger, author of A Love in the Shadows “I am always cautious when approaching a novel written by a published poet but Barbara McDonald made reading Slipsliding by the Bay easy for me. Enticing and entertaining, I read it with mounting pleasure.” —Chester Aaron, author of About Us