The Plum Queen
A Novel
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The Plum Queen
Pre-order for $22.23
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Narrated by:
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By:
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Laurel Lathrop
Summary
It’s 1984 and Lenore has just buried her husband. In the long summer days of her grief, she receives an unexpected letter from a woman named Phoebe. As girls, Phoebe and Lenore were best friends, raised by their mothers amid the California orchards. Decades of estrangement followed—and could end now, if Lenore can only bring herself to read the letter.
Spurred to look backward, Lenore revisits the memories of her life’s three great loves: First, she must admit to herself, Phoebe. Then Greta, a brash and bohemian New York painter. And finally Howard, a classicist who shared Lenore’s passion for voices of the past, and who went on to a successful academic career with Lenore’s quiet support over years of marriage. Each relationship has its own unique pleasures, risks, sacrifices.
Moving across the turbulent twentieth century, from the rugged landscapes of northern California to bustling postwar Manhattan, this heartrending and immersive debut explores the complex ties of family, friendship, and romance. The Plum Queen is about confronting the many versions of ourselves that accumulate over a lifetime—the person we once were, the person we could have been, and the person we still might become.
Critic Reviews
“The Plum Queen is a richly hued and luxuriant time machine that immerses the reader in women’s lives of the century just past, in women’s secrets, and particularly in women’s secret love affairs with each other. In remarkably assured prose, Lathrop paints a portrait of a sexually charged female friendship that never ceases to surprise us.”—Susan Choi, author of Flashlight
“A rich, warmly populated debut novel exploring the complexities of intimacy between women friends—a drama that feels both intensely personal and universal . . . Set in a vividly realized suburban America of an earlier era, it dramatizes the life of a woman of her time—wife, mother, lover—in beautifully engaging prose.”—Joyce Carol Oates, author of The Frenzy
“A rich, warmly populated debut novel exploring the complexities of intimacy between women friends—a drama that feels both intensely personal and universal . . . Set in a vividly realized suburban America of an earlier era, it dramatizes the life of a woman of her time—wife, mother, lover—in beautifully engaging prose.”—Joyce Carol Oates, author of The Frenzy
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