Crown
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- 13,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
“A book built of deep suspense, a survival story of the first order . . . Evanthia Bromiley writes at the intersection of poverty and motherhood better than almost anyone I know. Crown is an astonishing, revelatory first novel.” —Emily Fridlund
SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE JOHN LEONARD FIRST BOOK PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER OF FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE
A suspenseful, lyrical debut novel tracking three days leading up to the eviction of a pregnant single mother and her nine-year-old twins from a trailer park in the American Southwest.
Jude Woods is on the brink of eviction. Pregnant, jobless, and mother to Evan and Virginia, she has three days to box up her family’s life and find a safe place to live. In the Woods’ quiet trailer park, neighbors keep to themselves, but it’s no secret Jude and her twins are in jeopardy—the eviction notice slapped on their front door like a white shout.
When Jude’s contractions flare just as their power is shut off, she rushes to the hospital instructing Evan and Virginia to hide in their car in the surrounding fields. If the children are discovered outside alone, they will be taken from her. Jude labors through the night in a crowded emergency room while the twins, desperate in the heat of the cramped car and spurred by their wild imaginations, strike out along the dangerous riverbank in search of a new home for their growing family. As night hurtles toward the morning lockout, both mother and children reckon with what it means to live and dream in a modern America insistent on slamming doors.
Poetic and distinct, the voices of the three Woods open to a chorus of waitresses and oil men, veterans and graffiti artists as Crown trawls the laundromats, public bus systems, and waiting rooms of a forgotten blue-collar city. In this mesmerizing, singular debut, the tenacious spirit of a young family and their community comes to profound and moving life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bromiley debuts with a remarkable portrait of a jobless single mother as she navigates an impending eviction, pregnancy, and the watchful gaze of child protection services. Over the course of three days, Jude Woods attempts to keep her sanity and shield her nine-year-old twins, Evan and Virginia, from the harshest realities of their poverty. When she goes into labor, she makes the painful decision to abandon the twins to fend for themselves in the trailer park where they live, fearing they will be taken from her by CPS if they accompany her to the hospital. Other characters in the family's down-and-out world include a young man at the hospital who carried his girlfriend there after she overdosed on fentanyl, and who provides Jude with unexpected and much-needed companionship in the ER as she patiently waits to be admitted. In lyrical and pared-down prose, Bromiley toggles between the complex points of view of each family member, from Virginia's innocence to Evan's burgeoning sense of responsibility and Jude's poignant reckoning with their precarity ("Through these thin walls trickle bedtime stories, lullabies, whisper-fights. The good smells of cooking.... All, all, all this to be taken"). It's a knockout.
