CROWN

A lean and powerful debut novel set in the American Southwest, exploring love, loss, poverty and the wild beauty of imagination through the perspectives of a single mother and her nine-year-old twins who are facing eviction

Jude Woods is on the brink of eviction. Pregnant, jobless, and mom to Evan and Virginia, she has three days to box up her family's life and find a safe place to live. In the Woods' quiet trailer park, neighbors keep to themselves, but it's no secret Jude and her twins are in jeopardythe eviction notice slapped on their front door like a white shout. When Jude's contractions flare just as their power shuts off, she rushes to the hospital instructing Evan and Virginia to hide in the car in the surrounding fields. If the children are discovered out there alone, they will be taken from her. Jude labors through the night in a crowded emergency room while the twins, desperate in the heat of the cramped car and inspired by their imaginations, strike out along the dangerous riverbank in search of a new home for their growing family. As night hurtles toward the morning eviction, both mother and children reckon with what it means to live and dream in a modern America insistent on slamming doors. Poetic and distinct, the voices of the Woods open to a chorus of waitresses and oil men, veterans and graffiti artists and as Crown trawls the laundromats, social service offices, public bus systems and waiting rooms of blue-collar America, the tenacious spirit of a young family and their community is brought to profound and moving life. A graduate of Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers, Evanthia is the recipient of scholarships from the Aspen Institute, a Lighthouse Fellowship, a Lisel Mueller scholarship and Elizabeth George and Carol Houck-Smith awards. Her short fiction and creative non-fiction can be found in AGNI, Prairie Schooner, Five Points, and elsewhere. When she is not writing, she works in impacted schools with young writers and their teachers as they sharpen their craft and voices, telling stories of growing up in the American Southwest.