Simon Van Booy

When devastating news shatters the life of six-year-old Harvey, she finds herself in the care of a veteran social worker, Wanda, and alone in the world save for one relative she has never met a disabled felon, haunted by a violent past he can't escape. Moving between past and present, Father s Dayweaves together the story of Harvey s childhood on Long Island and her life as a young woman in Paris.Written in raw, spare prose that personifies the characters,...

"Over the course of a single week in a small English village, a widowed octogenarian who has spent her last years alone, ready to die, discovers an unexpected reason to live. After living abroad for sixty years, Helen Cartwright returns to the English town where she was born. She buys a nondescript suburban house on Westminster Crescent, a nondescript suburban street, and settles into a repetitive, reclusive existence: "Each day was an impersonation...

"In rural Kentucky, back in 1933, Carol's daddy lost his 13-year-old daughter in a game of cards. Award-winning author Simon Van Booy's spellbinding novel spans decades as he tells the story of Carol and the people in her life. Incidents intersect and lives unexpectedly change course in this masterfully interwoven story of chance and choice that leads home again to a night blessed with light. "What you give in this world," an old man tells his grandson,...

On the verge of giving upanchored to dreams that never came true and to people who have long since disappeared from their livesVan Booy's characters walk the streets of these stark and beautiful stories until chance meetings with strangers force them to face responsibility for lives they thought had continued on without them.