Eden: A Novel
Becca Meister Fitzpatrick―wife, mother, grandmother, and pillar of the community―is the dutiful steward of her family’s iconic summer tradition . . . until she discovers her recently deceased husband squandered their nest egg. As she struggles to accept that this is likely her last season in Long Harbor, Becca is inspired by her granddaughter’s boldness in the face of impending single-motherhood, and summons the courage to reveal a secret she was forced to bury long ago: the existence of a daughter she gave up fifty years ago. The question now is how her other daughter, Rachel―with whom Becca has always had a strained relationship―will react.
Eden is the account of the days leading up to the Fourth of July weekend, as Becca prepares to disclose her secret and her son and brothers conspire to put the estate on the market, interwoven with the century-old history of Becca’s family―her parents’ beginnings and ascent into affluence, and her mother’s own secret struggles in the grand home her father named “Eden.”
The Story Behind This Book
A modern day creation story, Eden appeals to a cross section of ages as it portrays the wounds a family passes down through the generations. While Eden is one woman's story, it echoes four women's stories, and is, at the same time, all women' story, weaving the past and the present together with both concise prose and broad, lyrical strokes.
Praise and Reviews
Eden is not just another farewell-to-the-summer-house novel, but instead a masterfully interwoven family saga with indelible characters, unforgettable stories, and true pathos. Most impressive, there’s not an ounce of fat on this excellent book.
Eden is a heartbreaking novel about the wounds that are passed down through generations. Blasberg’s voice is strong and clear, and her characters are so real—with their ambitions and their weaknesses, their good intentions and their resentments—that no reader is likely to forget them.
Jeanne Blasberg’s brilliant first novel conjures a family home so poignantly that I feel as if I’ve returned there every summer of my life. In Eden, Blasberg invites us into the fearsome echo chamber of a dysfunctional family, and shows us—in unsparing, crystalline prose—how the members of such a family can begin to make their way into the light.
Jeanne Blasberg’s touching debut novel, Eden, tells the story of Becca Meister Fitzpatrick, a family matriarch about to disclose a difficult secret over the Fourth of July weekend, 2000. As Blasberg’s clear, affecting prose moves across time to tell Becca’s story, the author also tells the story – heartbreaking, but ultimately hopeful – of a changing 20th century America.
With beautiful, big-hearted brush strokes, Blasberg seamlessly shifts between past and present, delivering a powerful and poignant family drama. As present-day challenges collide with long-buried secrets in the heat of a summer reunion, a family in crisis learns to accept truths, however uncomfortable, and how to navigate the closing doors, and new gifts, that change brings.
Sophie Powell, author of The Mushroom Man
In this wonderful debut, Blasberg masterfully intertwines the stories of four generations of women, all forced to make difficult choices as mothers— first in the face of strict societal norms, and ultimately, within the expectations of a family trying to live up to the promise of a place called Eden. I loved it from beginning to end.
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