Terry Gamble, Press Clippings

“Good Family” Reviews

“This coming-of-middle-age family novel is a cut above the usual. Recommended as the perfect camp novel of the summer.”

—Library Journal, April 2005

“Rich in elegant reflections and piquant observations, Gamble’s sublime account of a family in disarray and a woman displaced is sheer perfection; she masterfully gives shape and nuance to the intricacies of those relationships that are meant to provide comfort, but that very often mask underlying sorrow.”

—Booklist, May 1, 2005

“Gamble's evocative second novel... paints a poignant tale that is at once tragic and hopeful.”

—Publisher's Weekly, May 9, 2005

Good Family Press Release:

The New York Times Book Review predicts the future for Terry Gamble

Praise for the The Water Dancers, “Gamble’s voice is often fresh and assured, yielding a first novel that bodes well for her second.”

GOOD FAMILY
A NEW NOVEL BY
TERRY GAMBLE

Author of the critically acclaimed The Water Dancers

“Terry Gamble is a gifted writer, elegant, precise, evocative, and humane.  Her work is highly intelligent, skillful, and, most important, full of heart and soul.”

—Anne Lamott

Advanced Praise for Good Family

“Rich in elegant reflections and piquant observations, Gamble’s sublime account of a family in disarray and a woman displaced is sheer perfection; she masterfully gives shape and nuance to the intricacies of those relationships that are meant to provide comfort, but that very often mask underlying sorrow.”

Booklist

“This coming of middle-age-family novel is a cut above the usual.”

Library Journal

Author, Terry Gable lives up to the projected New York Times Book Review praise, in her second novel, Good Family (William Morrow; On Sale: 5/31/05; $24.95), where her strong, assured and elegant voice sings out once again.

Drawing on her experience as a descendent of one of America’s great industrial clans, and evoking the sun-drenched summers she spent at her family’s ancestral “cottage” on Lake Michigan’s North Shore, Gamble creates a compassionate, funny, and poignant tale of one woman’s bittersweet quest to come to terms with her past, assess her present, and find a new path for the future.

Maddie Addison is finally going home.  Eleven years ago, her infant daughter died in the crib at the summer home she grew up in.  Devastated, she moved to New York City, distancing herself from her family.  Upon learning the news from her sister Dana that their mother is dying, Maddie returns to her family’s grand but deteriorating summer place on the shores on Lake Michigan to say good-bye.

Armed with a dwindling inheritance and a feisty skepticism, Maddie must reconnect with the people she has long avoided: her sister, Dana, and a passel of cousins including Sedgie, the sodden thespian; Derek, the gifted artist; and the beautiful Buddhist, Adele.  As she rehashes her past and assesses her present, Maddie must come to terms not only with her mother Evelyn—a woman diminished by years spent accommodating her husband’s rigid mores—but also with the choices that have alienated her from her privileged life.

Good Family is already creating a buzz within the foreign publishing community.  It was recently sold to highly esteemed Dutch and French publishers, De Bezige Bij and Calmann Levy. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Terry Gamble is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Michigan, where she sits on the English advisory board. The author of one previous novel, The Water Dancers, she has had poems, short stories, and essays published in literary journals.  A fifth-generation member of her family to spend part of each summer in northern Michigan, she lives in California with her husband and children.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Good Family
Terry Gamble
William Morrow
On Sale: May 31, 2005
$24.95/336 pages
ISBN: 0060737948

Contact: Trina Rice, 212-207-7692
Trina.Rice@harpercollins.com

Terry Gamble, author of ''Good Family'' and ''The Water Dancers''
Photo: Mary S. Pitts

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