AVOCADO

A lyrical, romantic and madcap novel set in post-World War I that follows a married couple in search of success from Brooklyn to the California avocado groves and then to Hollywood at the twilight of the silent film era, by the author of Winter’s Tale and Freddy and Fredericka.

Using Candide as a point of ignition, the author follows Anna and Lewis Bernstein from post-WWI New York City to the magnificent landscapes of Northern California and the glittering mirage of Hollywood at the end of the silent era. Having barely survived the Great War and the Influenza, and despite the permanent turmoil and struggle that is New York, they find a Garden of Eden in Brooklyn Heights, and fully expect that their love for one another will content them there for the rest of their lives. But – helped by a bottle of Champagne – after their first bite of a mysterious, six-pound avocado obtained under baffling circumstances, they decide to throw everything over and head west to grow avocados in California. Enchanted to believe that everything beyond the Hudson will be idyllic and sweet, they discover that it, too, is corrupt, violent, and absurd. Nonetheless, they determine to cultivate their garden so as to recreate the Eden they once knew. Sensing that the five-year wait for their avocado trees to mature might result in death by starvation, Lewis embarks upon the more practical career of belles lettres, bursting onto the scene in a literary magazine with a subscription base of three Basque shepherds. This begins his and Anna’s association with Smilksteen (no first name, just Smilksteen), a volcano of mania, an insatiable serial entrepreneur, who leads them into the money-driven, sex-fueled lunacy of Hollywood at the dawn of its golden age. Rolling in the waves of Tinseltown, they continue to seek their Eden. To their astonishment, they find it – although they must overcome the danger in carrying it home. More important than their failure or success is that in enduring their rite of passage, they discover that it is possible to be loving and virtuous in a world that never was, and never will be, entirely safe or sane. Avocado is reminiscent of two of Helprin’s previous works, the lyrical love story that is Winter’s Tale, and the dash of Marx Brothers that is Freddy and Fredericka. Called by Esquire “the last epic novelist,” he is also the author of A Dove of the East and Other Stories, Refiner’s Fire, Ellis Island and Other Stories, A Soldier of the Great War, Memoir from Antproof Case, The Pacific and Other Stories, and, most recently, In Sunlight and In Shadow.