Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Historical adventure fiction

THE LATECOMERS

Helen Klein Ross

The Latecomers is reminiscent of Colm Toibin's Brooklyn, the sweeping family stories of Christina Baker Kline, with a dash of American Downton Abbey mixed in, told in interweaving timelines and rich with detailed history, romance and dark secrets.

In 1908, sixteen-year-old Bridey runs away from her small town in Ireland with her sweetheart Thom, but when Thom dies suddenly of ship fever on their ocean crossing, Bridey finds herself alone and pregnant in the streets of Manhattan. Forced by circumstance to give up the baby for adoption, Bridey finds work as a maid for the Hollingworth family at their lavish country estate in Connecticut. It's the dawn of a new century: innovative technologies are emerging, women's roles are changing, and Bridey is emboldened by the promise of a fresh start. She cares for the adopted Hollingworth heir as if he was her own (!), until a mysterious death changes Bridey and the household forever. For decades, the terrible secrets of Bridey's past continue to haunt the family until, in the present day, the youngest Hollingworth finds a hidden object that finally brings these dark stories into the light.

Helen Klein Ross's fiction and poetry has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, StoryQuarterly, and other journals and anthologies. She won the Iowa Review Award in poetry, Mid-American Review's Fineline Competition, was a finalist for the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Like DeLillo and Ferris, she is a veteran of advertising and spent many years at global ad agencies in San Francisco and New York City.

Available products
Book Published 2018-11-01 by Little, Brown
Book Published 2018-11-01 by Little, Brown

Comments

A triumph of storytelling, The Latecomers is a brilliantly researched and masterly told chronicle of the decades and generations in one immigrant's journey - and the deeply guarded alliances and secrets kept along the way. Ross has written a novel brimming with historical resonance, a riveting read infused with subtle wit and great intelligence.

A pair of devastating secrets twists and turns through this riveting, multigenerational novel of a wealthy east coast family and the Irish maid who served them. The Latecomers is about money, identity, and desire - but above all, it's about the lengths to which people will go to protect the ones they love.

For me, the best kind of historical fiction so expertly immerses you in the story and characters that you don't realize that you're receiving an education in the time and place. Helen Klein Ross does just this in The Latecomers. Her eye for accurate, interesting detail pertaining to the lives of women both upstairs and down in early twentieth century New York City and Connecticut, and her ear for the nuances of human behavior make for an engrossingly rich, unforgettable read. The breadth of her research in this novel astonishes me. I couldn't put it down.

With secrets spanning generations and the influence of history poking in on every page, this is a grand, sweeping, generation-spanning novel that will leave you breathless.

It's the winter. You need a family saga. That's just how it goes. [A] lovely novel.

[A] satisfying blend of historical and familial drama.

Skillfully constructed and rich in detail, Helen Klein Ross's The Latecomers showcases a gallery of vivid characters - Bridey is a particularly sympathetic heroine - and covers a significant span of Irish-American history, unfolding brilliantly from the story of an adoption.

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Fans of historical fiction will find much to enjoya reprise of the well-loved immigrant narrative and a meticulous depiction of early-20th-century life.

Dutch: Ambo Anthos ; Russian: Phantom Press