<div>A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year: During WWII, a Jewish boy copes with a new homeland, a polio diagnosis—and falling in love for the first time. Frank Gold’s family, Hungarian Jews, have fled the perils of World War II for the safety of Australia, but not long after their arrival, thirteen-year-old Frank is diagnosed with polio. He is sent to a sprawling children’s hospital called the Golden Age, where he meets Elsa, the most beautiful girl he has ever seen, a girl who radiates pure light. Soon, Frank and Elsa fall in love, fueling one another’s rehabilitation, facing the perils of illness and adolescence hand in hand—and scandalizing the prudish staff of the Golden Age. Their parents, meanwhile, are coping with their own challenges. Elsa’s mother must reconcile her hopes and dreams with the reality of her daughter’s sickness. Frank’s parents are isolated newcomers in a country they do not love and that does not seem to love them back. Frank’s mother, a renowned pianist in Hungary, refuses to allow the western deserts of Australia to become her home. But her husband slowly begins to free himself from the past and integrate into a new society. A winner of multiple literary awards in Australia, The Golden Age is a deeply moving novel about hardship and resilience that “graciously captures young love in a quiet and beautifully sculpted story that is easily devoured in one sitting” (Library Journal). “Poetic intensity suffuses the novel . . . Resisting easy sentimentality, [it] presents polio rehabilitation as a metaphor for postwar recovery.” —The New Yorker “Beautiful.” —The Dallas Morning News “The Golden Age is pretty much perfect.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)</div>

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The Golden Age

<div>A New York Times Notable Book from the author of The Golden Age. &ldquo;A remarkable study of a young woman&rsquo;s most literal rite of passage&rdquo; (The Baltimore Sun). Gilgamesh is a rich, spare, and evocative novel of encounters and escapes, of friendship and love, of loss and acceptance, a debut that marked the emergence of a world-class talent. It is 1937, and the modern world is waiting to erupt. On a farm in rural Australia, seventeen-year-old Edith lives with her mother and her sister, Frances. One afternoon two men, her English cousin Leopold and his Armenian friend Aram, arrive&mdash;taking the long way home from an archaeological dig in Iraq&mdash;to captivate Edith with tales of a world far beyond the narrow horizon of her small town of Nunderup. One such story is the epic of Gilgamesh, the ancient Mesopotamian king who traveled the world in search of eternal life. Two years later, in 1939, Edith and her young son, Jim, set off on their own journey, to Soviet Armenia, where they are trapped by the outbreak of war. Rich, spare, and evocative, Gilgamesh won The Age Book of the Year Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. &ldquo;Bold and beautiful . . . [An] astonishing saga . . . A woman as epic hero? It&rsquo;s high time.&rdquo; &mdash;Cathleen Medwick, O, The Oprah Magazine</div>

Gilgamesh

<div>A girl&rsquo;s disappearance in Australia induces a family reckoning in this &ldquo;dark and lovely work . . . full of elegance and mystery&rdquo; (The New York Times Book Review). A two-time winner of Australia&rsquo;s prestigious The Age Book of the Year Award, Joan London&rsquo;s debut novel, Gilgamesh, a New York Times Notable Book, was published to rapturous acclaim both in her native Australia and in the United States. Now, London delivers The Good Parents, a &ldquo;completely absorbing&rdquo; tale of mother love and the harrowing moment when a daughter spreads her wings and vanishes from her parents&rsquo; orbit (The Boston Globe). Maya de Jong is a shy, sweet, eighteen-year-old country girl who moves to Melbourne and begins an affair with her older, married boss. When Maya&rsquo;s parents, Toni and Jacob, arrive for a visit, Maya is gone, and no one knows where. Maya, for reasons of her own, leaves haunting clues in late-night calls to her brother at home, carefully&mdash;and puzzlingly&mdash;avoiding detection by the two people who love her most. Ultimately, to find her daughter Toni will have to revisit a part of her own past that she thought she had shut off forever&mdash;the closest she ever came to being a lost girl herself. The Good Parents is a stunning portrait of familial love, delusions and compromises, and how far we can drift apart in the moments between the words we speak. Enthralling, unsettling, and riveting, this &ldquo;arresting novel . . . explains the attraction of bad love for young women attempting to break free&rdquo; (The Independent).</div>

Joan London
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Books By Joan London (3 Books)

The Golden Age

Gilgamesh

The Good Parents

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© 2024 OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Joan LondonFollow this author

Books By Joan London (3 Books)

The Golden Age

Gilgamesh

The Good Parents

Get weekly updates and deals from Early Bird Books

More from

Corporate

© 2024 OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Joan London
Follow this author