Mrs. Woodbine's Prejudices

By Michael Ladner

It is the summer of 1960. The social conservatism of Dwight Eisenhower is about to give way to the progressive ambitions of John F. Kennedy. And three brothers, brought up in a suburb community in upstate New York, are travelling across the Atlantic to Austria, which only 15 years earlier had been part of the German Reich, to spend part of the summer with one of their grandfathers, a survivor of the war years. Michael Ladner's new novel is a gentle but closely observed exploration of the interweaving of two cultural landscapes populated by different generations of the same family. The novel tracks the various experiences of childhood discontent, adolescent ambition, marital disharmony, personal endurance, and the bitterness of persecution, watching as the characters are forced to confront their most secret longings and origins, with results both comic and tragic. And, at the centre of the novel, is the family nanny, Mrs. Ruby Woodbine, a widow from the South whose blend of folk wisdom and country prejudices provides an ironic counterpoint to the family's misadventures, triumphs and disasters. A quietly satirical piece of writing and a brilliant addition to EnvelopeBooks' range of new literary fiction.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 191502305X
• ISBN13: 9781915023056
• Release Date: September 2024
• Publisher: Envelope Books
• Length: 272 Pages