Goldengrove: A Novel - Softcover

Marshaling magnetic characters, hidden history, suspense, and acute insight into the transmutation of anguish into compassion, Prose plunges through the scrim of melodrama to reach the realm of myth, in a ravishing novel of the mystery of death and life s assertion. (Booklist (starred review))

Deeply touching and absorbing... (Publishers Weekly)

Francine Prose has a knack for getting to the heart of human nature. (USA Today)

Nico and Margaret have grown up with their ex-hippie parents in an isolated New England town on the shores of placid Mirror Lake. Nico, thirteen, is still an adolescent, small and pudgy, trying her best to grow up to be like her sister. Margaret, four years older, is vibrant and beautiful, a blossoming jazz singer with cookie-scented skin-born, as Nico says, in the wrong half of the century. When an unexpected tragedy shatters the peaceful life of this middle class family, Nico finds herself suddenly alone with her grief, and teetering on the brink of adulthood.
The only one who seems to understand how she feels is Margaret s boyfriend, Aaron, a gifted painter obsessed with elusive and mysterious Margaret. Nico and Aaron secretly begin to spend more and more time together. But as their friendship deepens and transforms, their tenuous dance takes on a dangerous cast.
With echoes of Vertigo and Pygmalion, GOLDENGROVE explores the treacherous territory of identity and love-both romantic and familial-during one haunted summer lived on the edge of innocence. Narrated in the unforgettable voice of a young girl, Francine Prose s new novel is a wrenching, heart-string pulling story about adolescence, family, and first love.