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by Evanthia Bromiley
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.
"Virginia and Evan's quest to get home through unknown territory builds to a taut climax that will leave readers breathless. Bromiley is also a master of the rhythms and realities of working-class life, in which keeping yourself together is a daily negotiation with bureaucracy and a chafing reminder that others have it worse. Though this is a story of contemporary life, it lives within the rich tradition of the literature and song of American struggle. This could be a story of the Dust Bowl or a city shelter; Jude could be the mother in Dorothea Lange's indelible photo. Full of ordinary royalty, shining with the triumph of staying human and extending grace even in deprivation." —Kirkus Reviews
"A beautiful story rife with realism and hope." —Booklist
"Beautifully written and quietly forceful, Evanthia Bromiley's debut novel, Crown, shines with compassion for all of its characters in their perilous conditions. They fashion from the landscape what is missing. They dream homes and wear small crowns 'woven of juniper and wild oak and the spare things of the desert.' Bromiley's book is concise and musical, and she has the heart of a poet." —Christine Schutt, author of Pure Hollywood
"Lyrical, unflinching, and emotionally compelling. Evanthia Bromiley has a particular strength in the way she portrays this family in jeopardy, never skimping on their emotional lives, but instead creating complex, layered scenes and moments of deep characterization. She has found opportunities to render beauty within otherwise bleak circumstances." —Dominic Smith, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos
This information about Crown 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.
Evanthia Bromiley is a graduate of the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers and the recipient of scholarships from the Aspen Institute, a Lighthouse Fellowship, a Lisel Mueller scholarship and Elizabeth George and Carol Houck-Smith awards. Her short fiction and creative non-fiction can be found in AGNI, Prairie Schooner, Five Points, and elsewhere. When not writing, she works in impacted schools with young writers and their teachers as they sharpen their craft and voices, telling stories of growing up in the American Southwest. She lives in Durango, Colorado.
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