“Faith, I tell them, is a mystery, elusive to many, and never easy to explain.”
The 19th Wife Is #1 On BookRiot’s List of Must-Read Historical Novels!
It is 1875, and Ann Eliza Young has recently separated from her powerful husband, Brigham Young, prophet and leader of the Mormon Church. Expelled and an outcast, Ann Eliza embarks on a crusade to end polygamy in the United States. A rich account of her family’s polygamous history is revealed, including how both she and her mother became plural wives. Yet soon after Ann Eliza’s story begins, a second exquisite narrative unfolds–a tale of murder involving a polygamist family in present-day Utah. Jordan Scott, a young man who was thrown out of his fundamentalist sect years earlier, must reenter the world that cast him aside in order to discover the truth behind his father’s death. And as Ann Eliza’s narrative intertwines with that of Jordan’s search, readers are pulled deeper into the mysteries of love, family, and faith.
“Engrossing…remarkable…a book packed with historical illumination, unforgettable characters and the deepest questions about the tenacity of belief” –The Washington Post Book World
“The 19th Wife is a big book, in every sense of the word. It sweeps across time and delves deeply into a world long hidden from sight. It offers historical and contemporary perspective on one of the world’s fastest-growing religions and one of its oldest practices, and in the process it does that thing all good novels do: It entertains us.” –Los Angeles Times
“Rarely has a work of fiction seemed more timely…A page-turning epic…[a] tour de force.” –Vogue
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“The dam broke and Linda looked up and saw the bluff collapse, a waterfall of mud.”
Pasadena tells the story of Linda Stamp, a fishergirl born in 1903 on a coastal onion farm, and the three men who change her life: her jealous brother, Edmund; Bruder, the orphan Linda’s father brings home from World War I; and a Pasadena orange rancher named Willis Poore. The novel spans Linda’s adventurous and romantic life, weaving the tales of her Mexican mother and her German-born father with those of the rural Pacific Coast of her youth and of the small, affluent city, Pasadena, that becomes her home. Pasadena is a novel of passion and history, about a woman and a place in perpetual transformation.
“Wuthering Heights meets East of Eden.” –The Wall Street Journal
“A luxurious tragedy…gorgeous, full of romance and disaster…Pasadena is a novel to get lost in.” –The Christian Science Monitor
“Ebershoff’s crafting of characters is so sharp, so perfect, that we ache for most of them…[He] has us in thrall, and every word he writes counts.” –Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“Full of detail and unerring language…magically evokes the rich and varied landscape of Southern California.” –The Boston Sunday Globe
“Passion for us all will remain a troublesome thing.”
The Rose City combines a collection of unforgettable characters with Ebershoff’s trademark emotional insight and intelligent prose in seven stories about young men and boys as they discover and rediscover themselves in a world that never really works out as planned. Often tragic but lacking in despair, The Rose City delves into the tribulations of youth, identity, sexuality – and longing for something just out of reach. Written with compassion and truth, these stories present characters who live at the margins of the world at the moment they take their first steps toward acceptance and love.
“[A] tender and darkly funny collection of stories.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Lyrical yet searingly graphic, it is truly literary territory. [Ebershoff is writing] an important body of work.” —Chicago Tribune
“Masterful and touching.” —Entertainment Weekly
“[Herein] lies the power of Ebershoff’s gracefully written stories — by delving so deeply into the minds of his characters, he captures all the conflicting emotions and bitter truths of not just gay life, but life itself.” —Austin Chronicle
In 2017 the New York Times Named The Danish Girl One of the 25 Books that Have Shaped LGBTQ Literature Over the Past 20 Years
Read my essays on Lili Elbe published in The Advocate and in the London Sunday Times
Loosely inspired by a true story, and a New York Times Notable Book, this tender portrait of marriage and identity asks: What do you do when the person you love has to change? Uniting fact and fiction into an original romantic vision, The Danish Girl eloquently portrays the unique intimacy that defines every marriage and the heroic story of Lili Elbe, a pioneer in transgender history, and the woman torn between loyalty to her marriage and her own ambitions and desires. The Danish Girl’s lush prose and generous emotional insight make it, after the last page is turned, a deeply moving first novel about one of the most passionate and unusual love stories of the 20th century.
“The Danish Girl is an extraordinary story about extraordinary people.” — Eddie Redmayne
Click here to read a conversation about The Danish Girl
“Heartbreaking and unforgettable, it is a complete triumph.” –The Boston Globe
“A first novel of startling refinement and beauty.” –The Chicago Tribune
“The intelligence and tactfulness of his exploration of [love] makes his novel a noteworthy event.” –The New York Times
“A fascinating novel, beautiful for its strange and delicate flavor and its characters’ depth of heart.” –San Francisco Chronicle
