A big, rich, commanding novel about the accidents both grand and small that determine our choices in love and marriage.
At the centre: Greenie Duquette, the fiery proprietor of her own Greenwich Village pastry business. When Greenie's signature coconut cake is served to the governor of New Mexico, he invites her to be his personal chef; impulsively she accepts. And when she heads west with her four-year-old son but without her husband, she sets in motion a period of adventure and upheaval - physical, emotional, sensual - not only for herself but for others who are drawn into her orbit: Alan, her psychotherapist husband, alone in New York and trying to make sense of his own life; Walter, the urbane yet old-fashioned gay man who owns the beloved village restaurant where the govenor ate Greenie's confection; Scott, Walter's teenage nephew, whose dreams of becoming a musician bring him to his uncle's doorstep; and Saga, a young woman recovering from a traumatic injury. We watch as serendipity and determination pull these lives ever more tightly together over the course of the year that culminates in the tragedy of 9/11 - a day that will galvanise each of the characters to seize life in a wholly new way. First published 2006.
Promotion info
The long-awaited new book from the acclaimed author of the National Book Award-winning Three Junes - a big, rich, commanding novel about the accidents both grand and small that determine our choices in love and marriage.
Author description
Julia Glass was a 2004-2005 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and her short stories have been honoured with three Nelson Algren Awards and the Tobias Wolff Award. Her first novel, Three Junes, won the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction. Until recently a longtime New Yorker, she now lives with her family in Massachusetts.
