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FictionFamily SagaDebut Fiction

The women behind a white-collar criminal

Review by Trisha Ping

Everyone loves the schadenfreude of a riches-to-rags story—except, that is, the people living it. In Brooklyn-based writer Angelica Baker’s ambitious debut, Our Little Racket, three women whose fates are tied to the fortunes of Wall Street legend Bob D’Amico find their lives turned upside down by the financial crash of September 15, 2008.

What Bob—who’s been nicknamed “Silverback” in the press due to his alpha-male dominance—did to cause the downfall of his investment firm, Weiss & Partners, isn’t immediately clear to anyone. Not his 15-year-old daughter, Madison; his beautiful, patrician wife, Isabel; or their longtime nanny, Lily. But whether he is guilty, innocent or somewhere in between, these women know that his disgrace is theirs, and their stratified community in Greenwich, Connecticut, isn’t going to let them forget it. All three are forced to think about their place in that community now: how they got there, what it means to them and what they might give up or whom they might be willing to betray to keep it.

The story is narrated in turns by Lily, Isabel and Madison, as well as Madison’s former best friend, Amanda, and Isabel’s wannabe best friend, Mina. Each sees the community from a unique point of view, which rounds out the portrayal of the place and society in interesting ways, but much of the novel is spent describing their emotions as they wait for Bob to declare his innocence or guilt, for the world to drop its verdict on him, or both. The almost complete interiority of the action and conflict makes for frustrated characters as well as occasionally claustrophobic readers, who are likely to long for a glimpse of the action outside the gilded cage of Greenwich. Still, Baker’s deft hand with metaphor and smooth writing style, along with a strong conclusion that cracks open one of the book’s most mysterious characters, makes Our Little Racket a journey worth taking.

Everyone loves the schadenfreude of a riches-to-rags story—except, that is, the people living it. In Brooklyn-based writer Angelica Baker’s ambitious debut, Our Little Racket, three women whose fates are tied to the fortunes of Wall Street legend Bob D’Amico find their lives turned upside down by the financial crash of September 15, 2008.

FictionDebut Fiction

Finding hope at the end of the world

Review by Chika Gujarathi

The South Pole, often talked about as that place melting quicker than the ice cubes in our summer drinks, happens to be the location of Ashley Shelby’s debut novel, South Pole Station. Filled with characters that one would expect in a place like this—scientists and researchers—it also has an unexpected menagerie of authors and artists, as well as an interpretive dancer and a climate skeptic who round out this spectacle at the southernmost tip of our planet.

The story starts miles away in Minnesota, where 30-year-old struggling artist Cooper Gosling has been offered a spot at the Amundsen-Scott research station. It’s hard to deny the unique inspiration such a place could evoke, but Cooper’s reasons to be so far from civilization have more to do with the personal trauma of her twin brother’s recent passing.

At the station, Cooper meets other “Polies” with whom she automatically shares the camaraderie of being in one of the strangest places on earth, although she still bears the weight of feeling like a lone castaway. But it’s hard to keep romance and friendships at bay, even in the most scientifically sterile place, and Cooper slowly finds the comfort she’s looking for. Throughout witty, often hilarious scenarios, Shelby expertly weaves in the legitimate political and environmental concerns of climate change faced by the worldwide scientific community today.

Shelby’s exploration of the human spirit continuously digs deeper, ever in search of answers to all of life’s important questions—scientific and otherwise.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The South Pole, often talked about as that place melting quicker than the ice cubes in our summer drinks, happens to be the location of Ashley Shelby’s debut novel, South Pole Station. Filled with characters that one would expect in a place like this—scientists and researchers—it also has an unexpected menagerie of authors and artists, as well as an interpretive dancer and a climate skeptic who round out this spectacle at the southernmost tip of our planet.

FictionDebut Fiction

A face in the crowd

Review by Deborah Donovan

Ian Bassingthwaighte’s experience as a legal aid worker in Egypt in 2009, helping to place refugees from Iraq and Sudan, was the impetus for this remarkable and timely debut novel, which takes place in Cairo in 2011, just after President Hosni Mubarak’s removal from power.

The story focuses on four characters trying to survive in the chaotic months following Mubarak’s ouster. Dalia is an Iraqi refugee who becomes trapped in Egypt after her petition to join her husband, Omran, in America is denied. Omran worked for the U.S. Army in Iraq and was abducted and tortured by anti-American militia. He was granted the right to go to America for his own safety, but for want of an official marriage certificate, Dalia was forced to stay behind. She escaped to Cairo, where she contacts the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, in hopes of obtaining her own refugee status so she can join Omran.

Dalia's case is assigned to Hana, an Iraqi citizen with her own tragic backstory: She has recently been hired by the UNHCR to read and evaluate refugee petitions, only a fraction of which are approved each year. Hana empathizes with Dalia, but her boss insists that Dalia’s case is not convincing enough, and her petition is denied.

Two other characters who become immersed in Dalia’s plight are Charlie, a lawyer for the Refugee Relief Project, and Aos, his translator who is also an active participant in anti-government protests. How they become enmeshed in a risky plot to get Dalia out of Cairo becomes the crux of the novel’s second half, as they enlist Hana’s help in some highly illegal activity, putting them all in danger.

We can all become numb by reading the news each day and seeing images on social media of those seeking safety from the violence in their home countries. But a novel such as this puts a very personal face on this growing global problem—one that is not going to disappear soon.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Ian Bassingthwaighte’s experience as a legal aid worker in Egypt in 2009, helping to place refugees from Iraq and Sudan, was the impetus for this remarkable and timely debut novel, which takes place in Cairo in 2011, just after President Hosni Mubarak’s removal from power.

FictionLiterary FictionDebut Fiction

A quietly powerful story of two lives intertwined

Review by Melissa Brown

In the shadow of Wounded Knee, the characters in Alexandra Fuller’s debut novel strive to make, force or find their way. Life on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation reads as both humorous and heartbreaking in Quiet Until the Thaw. Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson are cousins, bound by shared ancestry and blood, but little else. Rick grows to appreciate and revere the ways of the land of his people, the Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation; You Choose turns his back on the Rez and all it would teach him.

Fuller says much in few, well-chosen words, like the quiet Rick Overlooking Horse himself, who left the Rez to serve in Vietnam and came back burned in body but resolute in spirit. Winding through seminal events from the 1940s to the 2000s, Fuller muses on the nature of time itself, how it circles and returns, how cycles repeat themselves. You Choose wanders north, returns, becomes tribal chairman and then loses it all in a fit of rage. Rick finds his home in a meadow, tends wild horses, befriends buffalo and, late one night, becomes the caretaker for twin baby boys. A couple, Le-a Brings Plenty and Squanto, help raise them.

A nonfiction writer and memoirist, Fuller writes unhurriedly and with an economy of expression that is nonetheless evocative. Her characters’ lives and motivations—from You Choose and Rick to their guardian Mina; from Le-a and Squanto to the twin boys Jerusalem and Daniel—aren’t fully realized, but what is explored paints a vivid picture. As they search for belonging and meaning, every piece of the slowly unveiled story helps fill in the complicated puzzle of their relationships. You Choose’s and Rick’s paths meet time and time again until one last encounter, when the path of one becomes the path of the other in their seemingly fated intersection. Fuller writes: “Since all things are connected, always and for all time, there is no avoiding reunion.”

 

This article was originally published in the July 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In the shadow of Wounded Knee, the characters in Alexandra Fuller’s debut novel strive to make, force or find their way. Life on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation reads as both humorous and heartbreaking in Quiet Until the Thaw. Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson are cousins, bound by shared ancestry and blood, but little else. Rick grows to appreciate and revere the ways of the land of his people, the Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation; You Choose turns his back on the Rez and all it would teach him.

FictionLiterary FictionDebut Fiction

Reading between the lines

Review by Michael Magras

Cassie Hugo, one of two women at the center of The Confusion of Languages, the touching debut novel by Siobhan Fallon (You Know When the Men Are Gone), has many reasons to be jealous of Margaret Brickshaw, the biggest of which is Margaret’s family. It’s May 2011, the time of the Arab Spring. Both women are married to soldiers who work for the U.S. embassy in Jordan. But while Cassie and Dan haven’t conceived a child in their nine-year marriage (including the two years they’ve lived in Amman), Margaret and Crick, new to Jordan, have a 15-month-old boy named Mather.

Cassie’s jealousy might have been less intense if Dan hadn’t signed them up to sponsor the new arrivals. But she does her best to befriend Margaret and hide her sadness whenever she holds Mather and thinks, “This is everything I want.”

On the morning of May 13, with the men on assignment in Italy, Margaret gets into a car accident and doesn’t return from embassy headquarters, where she was supposed to fill out paperwork. While Cassie babysits Mather, she reads Margaret’s journals, in which Margaret chronicled relationships with people she met in Jordan, including two guards, one of whom teaches her Arabic and, in a moving scene, invites her to dinner with his family.

Cassie suspects Margaret may be seeing one of these men and that the affair may explain her disappearance, a suspicion fueled by an enigmatic journal entry: “I must find him. I must make it right.”

The device of one character reading another’s journal is a cliché, but The Confusion of Languages is nonetheless a moving work about desire and the dislocation one might experience in a foreign land. As Fallon shrewdly makes clear, a friend can be as mysterious as the ways of another culture.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Cassie Hugo, one of two women at the center of The Confusion of Languages, the touching debut novel by Siobhan Fallon (You Know When the Men Are Gone), has many reasons to be jealous of Margaret Brickshaw, the biggest of which is Margaret’s family.

FictionWorld FictionDebut Fiction

The stories women can tell

Review by Kenneth Champeon

Indian civilization produced the Kama Sutra and sculpture of unsurpassed lasciviousness, yet its Bollywood films spare no artifice to prevent its leads from kissing. Some Indians will tell you the British made them into prudes. Others blame Islam. These tensions and the hypocrisies they entail inform Balli Kaur Jaswal’s entertaining novel.

Its main character, Nikki, is a young Punjabi woman living in London. When her sister announces her intention to have an arranged marriage, Nikki posts her sister’s advert at the local Sikh community center. There she stumbles into teaching a class in English to the aforementioned widows. But the women end up composing erotica, much of it told in full. In this the novel resembles the Decameron of Boccaccio, if one wishes to be charitable. But the widows’ stories are even more provocative.

Needless to say, word gets out. Among those alarmed is a group called the Brotherhood. Suggestive of the Muslim Brotherhood, they are in practice more like the Taliban. They harass women who go about with heads uncovered. But despite these intimidations, as well as mild alarm from the woman who first hired her, Nikki falls under the spell of the widows’ titillating yarns. Meanwhile, Nikki has her own love interest and even gets entangled in a mystery involving a newlywed presumed to have burned herself to death.

As for the author, Jaswal seems well past caring whether her novel will give offense. The tone throughout is one of impish glee, and the erotica is convincing despite its humorous frame. At times the novel screams chick lit, but the cultural milieu adds a new twist on the Bridget Jones subgenre.

It also lays waste to many a cherished stereotype. Readers will never think of Punjabi widows quite the same way. They may be more Kama Sutra than Bollywood.

Indian civilization produced the Kama Sutra and sculpture of unsurpassed lasciviousness, yet its Bollywood films spare no artifice to prevent its leads from kissing. Some Indians will tell you the British made them into prudes. Others blame Islam. These tensions and the hypocrisies they entail inform Balli Kaur Jaswal’s entertaining novel.

FictionDebut FictionComing of Age

A young wrestler’s obsession

Review by G. Robert Frazier

Stephen Florida by Gabe Habash is a frenetic, frantic, frustrating and, above all, fun read. Habash is the product of an MFA program at New York University and the fiction reviews editor for Publishers Weekly. His complex fictional creation, college wrestler and titular hero Stephen Florida, isn’t so easy to grasp, and that’s what makes him so fascinating. Readers will be thoroughly engrossed by Florida’s whirlwind thoughts, philosophical questions, mood swings, yearnings for success and hapless attempts at finding emotional or social satisfaction with his girlfriend, best friend, teammates and coach.

Habash firmly roots the reader in Florida’s perilous psyche. In the vast openness and plain lifestyle of the Midwest, Florida is in the middle of nothingness, both physically and mentally. All that matters—as if it matters at all—is winning the NCAA wrestling championship in his weight class. Everything he has ever been is predicated on that one goal, that one desire, the one driving impulse. Thoughts of what comes next are hardly top of mind.

At times the story is frustratingly depressing, Florida’s antics aggravating, and his self-imposed isolationism infuriating. When he injures his knee during a match and is sidelined by surgery, his quest for national glory is put in serious jeopardy. He falls into a proverbial funk from which there seems no escape. You want to just hit him across the face and scream, “Snap out of it!” But at other times, you’re right there with him, feeling his pent-up rage, his overwhelming obsession, his need to slap someone else in the face or break their arm on the wrestling mat. You want to be Stephen Florida, if just for a little while, to relive past glories or to just ponder the path not taken.

Stephen Florida by Gabe Habash is a frenetic, frantic, frustrating and, above all, fun read. Habash is the product of an MFA program at New York University and the fiction reviews editor for Publishers Weekly. His complex fictional creation, college wrestler and titular hero Stephen Florida, isn’t so easy to grasp, and that’s what makes him so fascinating. Readers will be thoroughly engrossed by Florida’s whirlwind thoughts, philosophical questions, mood swings, yearnings for success and hapless attempts at finding emotional or social satisfaction with his girlfriend, best friend, teammates and coach.

FictionGothic FictionDebut Fiction

Roiling in 19th-century myth

Review by Leslie Hinson

Sarah Perry presents a comprehensively intelligent story in gorgeous, sprawling prose in The Essex Serpent. With a convincing tone that’s suggestive of the damp grayness of Victorian-era coastal England, Perry’s American debut (and her second novel) builds and unfolds with never-hurried pacing. Because of its density and care, it is not a page-turner, but more a slow burn to be savored and carefully pondered.

Following the death of her abusive husband, the young widow Cora Seaborne retreats with her son and nanny from London to Colchester, where the soil is ripe with fossils. The tale of a bloodthirsty sea creature has haunted the town of Colchester for centuries; its legacy is even etched into the ancient wood of the church pews. A recent earthquake is thought to have dislodged it and set loose its wrath upon the community.

Cora is a budding naturalist, which is common among housewives of her class and era. Cora, however, possesses exceptional intelligence and a newly unbridled passion for living. As she overturns the soil, collecting whatever she can carry, she hopes to discover glimpses of herself now that her husband is gone.

Cora befriends the local vicar, William Ransome, and his ailing wife, Stella. William and Cora have a stirring intellectual connection, one that both intrigues and infuriates them as they challenge each other’s respective beliefs. Cora believes the Colchester serpent is real and is enthralled by the opportunity to discover a new species. William believes the serpent to be a metaphor for the evils that dwell within everyone, a terror that can be dampened by faith.

The novel deftly leaps from character to character, including extremely well-written and complex children. While Perry writes a convincing romance, the romantic subplot deflates what could’ve been a feminist anthem of self-discovery and deep platonic intimacy.

Sarah Perry presents a comprehensively intelligent story in gorgeous, sprawling prose in The Essex Serpent. With a convincing tone that’s suggestive of the damp grayness of Victorian-era coastal England, Perry’s American debut (and her second novel) builds and unfolds with never-hurried pacing. Because of its density and care, it is not a page-turner, but more a slow burn to be savored and carefully pondered.

FictionDebut FictionComing of Age

Life in increasing entropy

Review by Stephenie Harrison

If good things come in small packages, then Weike Wang’s first novel, Chemistry, is a very good thing indeed. Featuring a struggling scientist and the collapse of her professional and romantic lives, Wang’s short and bittersweet debut packs a devastating emotional wallop despite its slender size.

Chemistry takes readers on a no-holds-barred trip into the dark and choppy waters of a woman’s skeptical mind as it does battle with her heart. When we first meet our anonymous narrator, she is several years into her graduate studies in chemistry only to find her enthusiasm for the subject flagging as her experiments fail to produce publishable results, much to the consternation of her advisor and the exasperation of her austere Chinese parents. Her private life proves no source of comfort, as she and her live-in boyfriend have entered an uneasy standoff due to her reluctance to accept his repeated marriage proposals. When a beaker-fueled breakdown at the lab leads to an indefinite leave of absence and her boyfriend accepts a faculty position in another state, it seems the narrator has finally hit rock bottom. She soon realizes, however, that her downward spiral is only beginning and that the second law of thermodynamics—that systems tend toward chaos—applies not only in the lab but also to life.

Reminiscent of Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation, Chemistry is an intimate and insightful novel that reads more like a memoir than it does fiction, so honest is its portrayal of its central character’s rich internal life. Wang’s own background in academia is an asset, adding authority and veracity to the protagonist and her world. Unafraid to explore the fallibility and foibles of our narrator, Wang exposes and probes her neuroses and insecurities with pithy and precise prose, capably blending in moments of wry comedy and absurd observations that keep things from ever getting too bleak. Emotionally exacting and daring, Chemistry is an astonishing and assured debut from one of fiction’s most exciting new voices.

If good things come in small packages, then Weike Wang’s first novel, Chemistry, is a very good thing indeed. Featuring a struggling scientist and the collapse of her professional and romantic lives, Wang’s short and bittersweet debut packs a devastating emotional wallop despite its slender size.

FictionHistorical FictionDebut Fiction

A mother’s courage

Review by Lauren Bufferd

Longtime editor and essayist Janet Benton turns her considerable skills to fiction with her debut, Lilli de Jong, a beautifully written historical novel set in 1880s Philadelphia about pregnancy, motherhood and the fight for economic independence.

Twenty-two-year-old Lilli discovers she is pregnant after her lover leaves for Pittsburgh in search of better employment. Though he has promised to send for her, Lilli is fearful of being shunned from her close-knit Quaker community and leaves home, taking refuge in a charity residence for unwed mothers in urban Philadelphia. After her daughter is born, she decides to keep the baby, a highly unusual decision in the late-19th century, when finding acceptance and shelter was nearly impossible for an unmarried mother.

Desperate for employment, Lilli is hired as a wet nurse for a wealthy family, at the financial and emotional expense of boarding her own daughter, with catastrophic results. Again and again, circumstances force Lilli to choose between her moral ideals and harsh social realities.

The novel is styled as a first-person diary, and Lilli’s eloquent self-expression is a product of her Quaker education and training as a teacher. Her clear-eyed view of her situation and her fearless questioning of a repressive system make for exhilarating reading, but even her spirit can’t always compete with the hardships of a culture where even wealthy white women had little economic agency.

It is a testament to Benton as a writer that this novel wears its considerable historical detail so lightly, although the narrative does get bogged down with repetitive descriptions of nursing and a few hard-to-believe deus ex machinas. But in its depiction of a mother’s fierce attachment to her child, Lilli de Jong has real resonance in today’s battles over women’s reproductive health and the rights of working mothers.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Janet Benton for Lilli de Jong.

This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Longtime editor and essayist Janet Benton turns her considerable skills to fiction with her debut, Lilli de Jong, a beautifully written historical novel set in 1880s Philadelphia about pregnancy, motherhood and the fight for economic independence.

FictionDebut FictionComic Fiction

The paradox of choice

Review by Chika Gujarathi

In Katherine Heiny’s debut novel, Standard Deviation, we meet Graham and Audra Cavanaugh, a typical New York couple with a city condo, a kid and a busy social life. Stylish, youngish and always saying outrageous things, Audra is a firecracker who delights and embarrasses all at once. Graham, her much older husband of 12 years, is quieter and more filtered. He loves Audra as she is, but he often finds himself wondering how this marriage of opposites has worked out so well over the years.

In statistics, standard deviation is defined as a measure of how far a number diverges from the group as a whole. The same can be said about Heiny’s novel, as she introduces characters and situations that make Audra and Graham’s relationship appear less and less normal. Among them is Graham’s ex-wife, Elspeth, whom Graham hasn’t talked to in years, but an unexpected run-in rekindles a relationship and leaves him questioning his marriage to Audra. There is also the parenting of Graham and Audra’s 10-year-old son, Matthew, who has Asperger’s syndrome and an obsession with origami. A slew of other interesting and peculiar acquaintances compose a veritable parade through the couple’s living room, adding perspective to their marriage with a bit of comedy mixed in.

Heiny offers a fun read about family dynamics as she sidesteps too much seriousness with quick wit and humorous dialogue.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In Katherine Heiny’s debut novel, Standard Deviation, we meet Graham and Audra Cavanaugh, a typical New York couple with a city condo, a kid and a busy social life. Stylish, youngish and always saying outrageous things, Audra is a firecracker who delights and embarrasses all at once. Graham, her much older husband of 12 years, is quieter and more filtered. He loves Audra as she is, but he often finds himself wondering how this marriage of opposites has worked out so well over the years.

FictionDebut FictionComing of Age

So far from home

Review by Michael Magras

In The Leavers, Lisa Ko’s assured debut novel, Deming Guo, an 11-year-old Chinese boy living in New York City, experiences a child’s worst nightmare: His single mother, Polly, an undocumented immigrant, goes to work one day and doesn’t come home. That event is the catalyst for a timely story of immigrant families in America.

As a teenager, Polly, born in a poor Chinese province, gets pregnant after a fling with a classmate. She goes into debt to a loan shark for the money to travel to America, where she has the baby. She soon discovers she can’t care for the boy while working to pay off the debt, so she sends 1-year-old Deming back to China, where her elderly father cares for him. But when Deming is 6, he returns to the U.S. after his grandfather dies.

By that time, Polly is living with her boyfriend; his sister, Vivian; and Vivian’s son, Michael. After Polly disappears, Deming spends a brief stint in foster care. He is adopted by a childless white couple, 40ish professors who live upstate and change Deming’s name to Daniel. By age 21, Daniel is an indifferent student, an aspiring rock musician and an inveterate gambler. His adoptive parents encourage him to enroll in classes at their college, but the city and a music career hold greater appeal. All of these plans are upended when Michael, who hasn’t seen Daniel since the adoption, tracks him down with information about Polly.

Some of the story’s contrasts, especially between Deming’s birth and adoptive families, are too stark, but The Leavers (winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction, awarded by Barbara Kingsolver) is a thoughtful work about undocumented immigrants and the threats they endure. Midway through the novel, Polly recalls a subway ride when Deming was little. The train emerges from underground, “tearing straight into the sunlight, and I couldn’t wait to see your face.” That’s a beautiful expression of love that every family should appreciate.

In The Leavers, Lisa Ko’s assured debut novel, Deming Guo, an 11-year-old Chinese boy living in New York City, experiences a child’s worst nightmare: His single mother, Polly, an undocumented immigrant, goes to work one day and doesn’t come home. That event is the catalyst for a timely story of immigrant families in America.

FictionHistorical FictionDebut Fiction

Brontë’s tortured hero

Review by Hope Racine

There are few romantic heroes in classic literature more confusing or less sympathetic than Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester. In her debut novel, Sarah Shoemaker has set about unmasking this brooding hero. Fully immersing readers in the language and culture of the 19th century, Mr. Rochester is a coming-of-age journey that follows the lonely and motherless Edward Rochester from bleak Thornfield Hall to sunny and humid Jamaica, through a childhood that feels torn from a Dickens novel and into the murky waters of adulthood.

Mr. Rochester differs from popular Jane Eyre retellings, such as Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, in that Shoemaker, a retired librarian, succeeds in painting a sympathetic portrait of the man. Edward is revealed to be deeply emotional and achingly lonely. His sole desire in life is a companion—be it lover or friend—and his repeated inability to find one is what drives him to become the man readers know and (sometimes) love. The strength of the novel lies in Shoemaker’s acute attention to detail and historical accuracy, particularly in her treatment of Jamaica, where slavery is king and everything young Edward thought he knew has been turned upside down.

Mr. Rochester is beautifully paced and compelling as it delivers a sweeping narrative and a new perspective to one of literature’s most famous love stories. Many questions and confusions from the original story—such as Bertha’s backstory, why Edward hides his feelings and why he finally decides to propose—have been answered. Though the novel will appeal most to fans of Jane Eyre, Shoemaker has recreated the spirit of the original, which will help those unfamiliar with the text enjoy this retelling.

There are few romantic heroes in classic literature more confusing or less sympathetic than Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester. In her debut novel, Sarah Shoemaker has set about unmasking this brooding hero. Fully immersing readers in the language and culture of the 19th century, Mr. Rochester is a coming-of-age journey that follows the lonely and motherless Edward Rochester from bleak Thornfield Hall to sunny and humid Jamaica, through a childhood that feels torn from a Dickens novel and into the murky waters of adulthood.

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