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A Novel
by Allison Larkin
The acclaimed author of the "lyrical coming-of-age novel" (Good Morning America) The People We Keep returns with a luminous new story of redemption, breaking generational curses, and the power of family in its truest form.
After an emergency leaves her short on rent, thirty-year-old Freya Arnalds bails on her lackluster life as bartender in Maine and returns to her suburban hometown of Somers, New York, to live in the house she inherited from her estranged parents. Despite attempts to lay low, Freya encounters childhood friends, familial enemies, and old flames—as well as her fifteen-year-old niece, Aubrey, who is secretly living in the derelict home. As they reconnect, Freya and Aubrey lean on each other, working to restore the house and come to terms with the devastating events that pulled them apart years ago.
Set in the birthplace of the American circus, this deeply moving novel is an exploration of broken families, the weight of the past, and the complicated journey of finding home.
"Larkin explores with tenderness and nuance the strong yet complicated relationship between her protagonists, and successfully uses the details of home repair as a metaphor for the rebuilding of Freya's and Aubrey's lives. It's a cozy tale of new beginnings." —Publishers Weekly
"In Home of the American Circus, Allie Larkin illuminates the other Gen X we haven't seen in movies and books: the quiet, thoughtful, uncertain kids who grew into adults waiting for their moment. This book is a brilliant study of small-town life and the cautious wants of a broken heart. You will not be able to forget any of the characters, human or elephant." —Ethan Joella, author of The Same Bright Stars
"A tender and heartbreaking exploration of what it's like to come crawling back to a home you once fled. Amid her keen observations on life in small towns, Larkin shows us the crushing despair of failure and the fearlessness it brings. You will come away from this book changed, eyes bleary with nostalgia and hope for the future." —Bryn Greenwood, New York Times bestselling author of All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
"Told with compassion, humor, and honesty, Allison Larkin's stunning Home of the American Circus is a poignant tale of estrangement, redefining family, reckoning with the past, and healing through challenging but ultimately empowering circumstances. Readers will fall in love with Larkin's cast of vivid characters and won't want to say goodbye at the end of the book." —Cassandra Dunn, author of The Art of Adapting
This information about Home of the American Circus was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Allison Larkin is the internationally bestselling author of the novels The People We Keep, Stay, Why Can't I Be You, and Swimming for Sunlight. Her short fiction has been published in the Summerset Review and Slice, and nonfiction in Author in Progress, a how-to guide from Writer's Digest Books, and the dog anthology I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Jeremy, and their rescue dog, Roxy.
Happy Land
by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family's secret ties to a vanished American Kingdom.
Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
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