RAMONA AUSUBEL READS FROM HER NEW NOVEL SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF EASE AND PLENTY

Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty (Riverhead Books)

Ramona Ausubel burst onto the literary scene in 2012 with her debut novelNo One is Here Except All of Us, earning the love of critics with her inimitable voice and imaginative style, and winning the PEN Center USA Fiction Award and the VCU Cabell First Novel Award, as well as being named a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. Next came A Guide To Being Born, an enthralling story collection that Aimee Bender declared “fresh, delicate, beautiful, expressive, otherworldly.” 

Now, already named a most-anticipated book of the year by The Millions,Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty opens on Labor Day 1976 on Martha's Vineyard. Summering at the family beach house, Fern and Edgar—married with three children—learn that the unimaginable has occurred: There is no more money. More specifically, there's no more money in the estate that had allowed them to live this charmed and comfortable life despite their professed anti-money ideals. Quickly unraveling, they are tempted away on separate adventures—unknowingly abandoning their three young children, who set about devising a kind of Netherland for themselves. 

Fresh and vital, Ausubel’s magnetic work is chock-full of humanity and wisdom, imbued with humor and bite and a vivid sense of where we find meaning and sustenance. A story of American wealth, class and mobility,Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty explores with Ausubel’s characteristic whimsy and profundity the complicated legacies and strength of family love.

Ausubel’s uncanny ability to simultaneously transport, entertain, mesmerize and inspire, makes Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty a deeply satisfying read that will linger with you in powerful ways.

Praise for Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty

“Fortunes and hearts are lost and found in a modern fairy tale set in the 1960s and '70s. . .Ausubel's magical, engrossing prose style perfectly fits this magical, engrossing story."—KIRKUS, starred review 

"This is the book about class and love that I’ve been waiting for. A riches-to-rags story with all the twists and unraveling you could want, embroidered divine in the wizardy mind of Ramona Ausubel, whose imagination and music are simply peerless. A gorgeous and moving must-read!"—Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Gold, Fame, Citrus and Battleborn

"Ramona Ausubel has given us a brilliantly imagined novel about family and fortune and the hidden knots between. You're holding a book brimming with life by an author bursting with talent." —Maggie Shipstead, author ofSeating Arrangements and Astonish Me

Ramona Ausubel is the author of the novel No One Is Here Except All of Us, winner of the PEN Center USA Fiction Award and the VCU Cabell First Novel Award, and finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. She is also the author of the story collection A Guide to Being Born, and has been published in The New Yorker, One Story, The Paris Review Daily, and Best American Fantasy.