"This is the entrancing story of a woman poised between the summer and the autumn of her life. Jonathan Strong makes us feel the cool breezes beneath the shortening days, and he shows us how time complicates and colors our desires. This is a heartening novel. In each bittersweet encounter, Mary Lanaghan and her loved ones learn what it means to let go without giving up."?Michael Downing
"With spare, fluid prose, Mr. Strong envelops his characters in a dreamy, womblike world, delineating in knowing and delicate detail all the bliss and blundering that are part of life and love."?The New York Times Book Review, praise for The Old World
Jonathan Strong's first book was published to acclaim in 1969. To date he has published nine novels and short story collections, including The Old World, Offspring, Secret Words, Companion Pieces, and An Untold Tale, all available from Zoland Books. Jonathan Strong teaches writing at Tufts University, and lives on Cape Ann, Massachusetts.
An excerpt: A MAY MONDAY
When Mary Lanaghan's husband left her in 1985, she took her four children to the country-or so it seemed then-and found a house by a lake in the woods. She was unable to afford as much land about her as she would have liked, but for some years she and her two girls and two boys lived with the sounds of birds and at night only starlight. It was a refuge from the suburb where her neighbors had watched her marriage come apart. Her children went onto the regional high school which was a step down from their old school system, but Mary no longer cared what colleges they got into;
