From NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION 5 UNDER 35 HONOREE and FLANNERY O'CONNOR AWARD WINNER Melinda Moustakis, a debut novel set in Alaska, about the turbulent marriage of two unlikely homesteaders
“A beautiful novel, quiet as a snowfall, warm as a glowing wood stove…Admirers of Marilynne Robinson and Alice Munro are bound to appreciate.” —NPR
“Spare and exquisite, tough and lovely. The sentences build on themselves, becoming expansive and staggering in their sweep.” —The New York Times Book Review
Anchorage, 1956. When Marie and Lawrence first lock eyes at the Moose Lodge, they are immediately drawn together. But when they decide to marry, days later, they are more in love with the promise of homesteading than anything. For Lawrence, his parcel of 150 acres is an opportunity to finally belong in a world that has never delivered on its promise. For Marie, the land is an escape from the empty future she sees spinning out before her, and a risky bet is better than none at all. But over the next few years, as they work the land in an attempt to secure a deed to their homestead, they must face everything they don’t know about each other. As the Territory of Alaska moves toward statehood and inexorable change, can Marie and Lawrence create something new, or will they break apart trying?
Immersive and wild-hearted, joyfully alive to both the intimate and the elemental, Homestead is an unflinching portrait of a new state and of the hard-fought, hard-bitten work of making a family.
Genre: Literary Fiction
“A beautiful novel, quiet as a snowfall, warm as a glowing wood stove…Admirers of Marilynne Robinson and Alice Munro are bound to appreciate.” —NPR
“Spare and exquisite, tough and lovely. The sentences build on themselves, becoming expansive and staggering in their sweep.” —The New York Times Book Review
Anchorage, 1956. When Marie and Lawrence first lock eyes at the Moose Lodge, they are immediately drawn together. But when they decide to marry, days later, they are more in love with the promise of homesteading than anything. For Lawrence, his parcel of 150 acres is an opportunity to finally belong in a world that has never delivered on its promise. For Marie, the land is an escape from the empty future she sees spinning out before her, and a risky bet is better than none at all. But over the next few years, as they work the land in an attempt to secure a deed to their homestead, they must face everything they don’t know about each other. As the Territory of Alaska moves toward statehood and inexorable change, can Marie and Lawrence create something new, or will they break apart trying?
Immersive and wild-hearted, joyfully alive to both the intimate and the elemental, Homestead is an unflinching portrait of a new state and of the hard-fought, hard-bitten work of making a family.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Homestead ardently depicts a fraught and complicated moment in history through the most intimate of lenses: that of a young marriage built on uncertain ground. Moustakis has given us--in sentences as beautiful and brutal as the landscapes they describe--a haunting portrait of the terrain of the heart." - Jennine Capó Crucet
"This book casts a spell. A quiet, immersive, and gorgeously written exploration of love, war, guilt, and forgiveness that asks how well one person can ever truly know another." - Ash Davidson
"With haunting clarity and lyrical grace, Moustakis harnesses the power, the seductive beauty, and the divine treachery of the natural world to tell an epic story of survival and restless longing. Moustakis is a writer whose crystalline prose dazzles on every page. Homestead is an absolute triumph!" - Amber Dermont
"Moustakis is a writer of singular beauty, whether turning her attention to the Alaskan landscape or the intimate landscape of a marriage. Homestead is a luminous consideration of what it means for something or someone to belong to someone else, and of how fraught and tentative the labor of longing and belonging can be." - Danielle Evans
"Part fever dream, part wilderness adventure, part family saga, in prose both elegant and resonant, Homestead tells of a broken, bitter man and an impulsive girl who battle it out to stake their claim, not on each other after all, but on 150 acres of unproven and break-your-heart-beautiful land in an Alaska on the verge of statehood." - Pam Houston
"To read Homestead is to be swept into the Alaskan wilderness of an early marriage. Both intimate and epic, this novel questions the very meaning of origin and ownership. Moustakis writes with the hunger and heat of a pistol, the coolness of cherry wine and vanilla snow. A gorgeous feat of storytelling." - Rachel Swearingen
"Moustakis's writing is so good, so precise, so strong, and so deeply felt that it immediately creates a sense of time and place, and builds a quiet suspense about Marie and taciturn Lawrence. Homestead manages to be laconic and wry and visceral and primal and almost subversive in its depiction of marriage as a lovely, profound hardship." - Jess Walter
"I loved this book. The marriage is feral, the child-rearing frost-bitten, the betrayals and redemptions jagged as mountain peaks. In blazing, poetic prose, Moustakis brings 1950s Alaska roaring to life." - Kawai Strong Washburn
"Moustakis's evocation of place is breathtaking: reader, I doubt you will be able to finish this novel without falling in love with her Alaska, too. With Annie Proulx's precision of detail and Ron Rash's nuanced characterization, Moustakis's debut marks a major literary achievement." - Nick White
"This book casts a spell. A quiet, immersive, and gorgeously written exploration of love, war, guilt, and forgiveness that asks how well one person can ever truly know another." - Ash Davidson
"With haunting clarity and lyrical grace, Moustakis harnesses the power, the seductive beauty, and the divine treachery of the natural world to tell an epic story of survival and restless longing. Moustakis is a writer whose crystalline prose dazzles on every page. Homestead is an absolute triumph!" - Amber Dermont
"Moustakis is a writer of singular beauty, whether turning her attention to the Alaskan landscape or the intimate landscape of a marriage. Homestead is a luminous consideration of what it means for something or someone to belong to someone else, and of how fraught and tentative the labor of longing and belonging can be." - Danielle Evans
"Part fever dream, part wilderness adventure, part family saga, in prose both elegant and resonant, Homestead tells of a broken, bitter man and an impulsive girl who battle it out to stake their claim, not on each other after all, but on 150 acres of unproven and break-your-heart-beautiful land in an Alaska on the verge of statehood." - Pam Houston
"To read Homestead is to be swept into the Alaskan wilderness of an early marriage. Both intimate and epic, this novel questions the very meaning of origin and ownership. Moustakis writes with the hunger and heat of a pistol, the coolness of cherry wine and vanilla snow. A gorgeous feat of storytelling." - Rachel Swearingen
"Moustakis's writing is so good, so precise, so strong, and so deeply felt that it immediately creates a sense of time and place, and builds a quiet suspense about Marie and taciturn Lawrence. Homestead manages to be laconic and wry and visceral and primal and almost subversive in its depiction of marriage as a lovely, profound hardship." - Jess Walter
"I loved this book. The marriage is feral, the child-rearing frost-bitten, the betrayals and redemptions jagged as mountain peaks. In blazing, poetic prose, Moustakis brings 1950s Alaska roaring to life." - Kawai Strong Washburn
"Moustakis's evocation of place is breathtaking: reader, I doubt you will be able to finish this novel without falling in love with her Alaska, too. With Annie Proulx's precision of detail and Ron Rash's nuanced characterization, Moustakis's debut marks a major literary achievement." - Nick White
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