Story Behind The 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.
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<blockquote style="padding:0px;background-color:rgb(246,246,246);border:none rgb(240,78,55);font-size:16px;line-height:1.6;font-family:Raleway;color:rgb(116,116,116);font-style:italic;margin:0px;"><q style="margin-bottom:0px;background-color:rgb(196,230,229);color:rgb(51,51,51);letter-spacing:0px;line-height:22px;padding:25px;"><span style="font-style:normal;">Eden</span> 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.</q></blockquote> <div class="author" style="padding:12px 0px 0px;line-height:normal;font-family:Raleway;font-size:16px;color:rgb(51,51,51);"><span class="company-name" style="vertical-align:middle;"><strong>Anita Shreve</strong>, <span>NYT best selling author of <em>The Pilot's Wife and The Stars are Fire</em></span></span></div> <div class="author" style="padding:12px 0px 0px;line-height:normal;font-family:Raleway;font-size:16px;color:rgb(51,51,51);"> <blockquote style="padding:0px;background-color:rgb(246,246,246);border:none rgb(240,78,55);font-size:16px;line-height:1.6;font-family:Raleway;color:rgb(116,116,116);font-style:italic;margin:0px;"><q style="margin-bottom:0px;background-color:rgb(196,230,229);color:rgb(51,51,51);letter-spacing:0px;line-height:22px;padding:25px;"><span style="margin-bottom:0px;font-style:normal;">Eden</span> 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. </q></blockquote> <div class="author" style="padding:12px 0px 0px;line-height:normal;font-family:Raleway;font-size:16px;color:rgb(51,51,51);"><span class="company-name" style="vertical-align:middle;"><strong>Ivy Pochoda</strong>, <span>author of <em>Visitation Street</em></span></span></div> <div class="author" style="padding:12px 0px 0px;line-height:normal;font-family:Raleway;font-size:16px;color:rgb(51,51,51);"> <blockquote style="padding:0px;background-color:rgb(246,246,246);border:none rgb(240,78,55);font-size:16px;line-height:1.6;font-family:Raleway;color:rgb(116,116,116);font-style:italic;margin:0px;"><q style="margin-bottom:0px;background-color:rgb(196,230,229);color:rgb(51,51,51);letter-spacing:0px;line-height:22px;padding:25px;">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 <span style="margin-bottom:0px;font-style:normal;">Eden</span>, 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.</q></blockquote> <div class="author" style="padding:12px 0px 0px;line-height:normal;font-family:Raleway;font-size:16px;color:rgb(51,51,51);"><span class="company-name" style="vertical-align:middle;"><strong>Louisa Hall</strong>, <span>author of <em>Speak</em> and <em>The Carriage House</em></span></span></div> </div> <blockquote style="padding:0px;background-color:rgb(246,246,246);border:none rgb(240,78,55);font-size:16px;line-height:1.6;font-family:Raleway;color:rgb(116,116,116);font-style:italic;margin:0px;"><q style="margin-bottom:0px;background-color:rgb(196,230,229);color:rgb(51,51,51);letter-spacing:0px;line-height:22px;padding:25px;">Jeanne Blasberg’s touching debut novel, <span style="margin-bottom:0px;font-style:normal;">Eden</span>, 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.</q></blockquote> <div class="author" style="padding:12px 0px 0px;line-height:normal;font-family:Raleway;font-size:16px;color:rgb(51,51,51);"><span class="company-name" style="vertical-align:middle;"><strong>Lisa Borders</strong>, <span>author of <em>The Fifty-First State and Cloud Cuckoo Land</em></span></span></div> <div class="author" style="padding:12px 0px 0px;line-height:normal;font-family:Raleway;font-size:16px;color:rgb(51,51,51);"> <blockquote style="padding:0px;background-color:rgb(246,246,246);border:none rgb(240,78,55);font-size:16px;line-height:1.6;font-family:Raleway;color:rgb(116,116,116);font-style:italic;margin:0px;"><q style="margin-bottom:0px;background-color:rgb(196,230,229);color:rgb(51,51,51);letter-spacing:0px;line-height:22px;padding:25px;">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. </q></blockquote> <div class="author" style="padding:12px 0px 0px;line-height:normal;font-family:Raleway;font-size:16px;color:rgb(51,51,51);"> <p><span class="company-name" style="vertical-align:middle;"><strong>Sophie Powell</strong>, <span>author of <em>The Mushroom Man</em></span></span></p> <p><span class="company-name" style="vertical-align:middle;"><span><em><span style="letter-spacing:0px;background-color:rgb(196,230,229);">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.</span></em></span></span></p> <div class="author" style="padding:12px 0px 0px;line-height:normal;font-style:normal;"><span class="company-name" style="vertical-align:middle;"><span><em><span class="company-name" style="vertical-align:middle;"><strong>Katherine Sherbrooke</strong>, <span>author of <em>Finding Home<em> and <em>Fill the Sky</em></em></em></span></span></em></span></span></div> </div> </div> </div>