Saturday, February 24, 2018

That was then, this is now: a new novel from Andrew Furman sets the scene from 1961 in Florida

Yes, it’s 1961 in America and everything is changing, and in Florida especially, and Florida literature professor Andrew Furman tells a spellbinding story in his new novel, 'Goldens Are Here.' Get ready: Publication date is in April.

That was then, this is now?

Jim Crow strains to maintain its hold, the Cold War escalates, the USA space program hits its stride, and a Jewish family in Florida, Mr and Mrs. Golden, are determined to begin a new pastoral life along Florida’s central east coast. They are trying to hold on to their small orange grove near the excitement of Cape Canaveral.

Furman imagines with great empathy the individual members of the Golden family and their unique struggles and dreams during a single tumultuous citrus season. Isaac Golden must reckon between his ambition to create the perfect fruit and the business realities bearing down upon him given the booming postwar demand for cheap frozen concentrate; his beautiful wife, Melody, finds herself testing the boundaries that had so clearly governed her more conventional life in suburban Philadelphia; and their chronically ill son, Eli, wishes only to muster his strength so that he might enjoy the wide open outdoors and see a bobcat.

Inspired by true events surrounding a historic Florida citrus season and the civil rights struggle in a region not immediately associated with the movement, this novel offers a glimpse of the sea changes occurring in Florida and America as a whole in the 1960s through the prism of one family’s negotiations with the land, their neighbors, and with each other.

Published by Green Writers Press in Vermont for a national readership. International too!

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