Early Autumn

A Compelling Pulitzer Prize-Winning Saga of a Family's Fall from Power "TRULY LOVELY" -Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl For generations, the proud Pentland family name meant wealth, class, and status. In the years following the first World War, however, change was in the air, with numerous nouveaux-riches pretenders challenging the privileged family's position as an arbiter of values and class. Strong-willed Olivia Pentland-wife of Anson, the cold and distant heir to the family fortune-endures a tedious life largely devoid of joy or passion. Trapped in a stifling marriage, Olivia must examine her conscience and choose between the sudden thrill and lure of new love and the heavy tug of traditional family duty. An extravagant debutante party at the Pentland estate for next-generation Sybil and Sabine opens a dramatic window into the façade the family maintains and becomes a catalyst for fracturing the perquisites they've all grown accustomed to. In the weeks that follow, relationships are tested, decorum and privilege challenged, and several carefully guarded family secrets unearthed in a cascading series of events which irrevocably upends their lives. Winner of the 1927 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Louis Bromfield's witty and satirical epic evokes a keen insight into human nature and a powerful appreciation of the natural world. In unmasking the rigid and puritanical, class-based New England mores as the veneer to a lifestyle with little meaning, Bromfield sets the stage for a wholly new social contract. A reading of Early Autumn is an indelible experience you won't want to miss. This book is also available from Echo Point Books as a hardcover (ISBN 1648371736).