In “Cabin,” Karen Joy Fowler, best-selling author of “The Jane Austen Book Club” and “We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves,” returns with a historical novel about a famous family of actors, one of whom would become a murderer presidential.
Read an excerpt below.
GP Putnam’s Sons
Rosalie, the eldest daughter, is sitting on the steps leading down to Beech Spring, watching her brother and sister make boats with leaves. He is thinking of Ophelia, adrift in her soaked dress, her hair stretched out on the water, her face surrounded by flowers. She is dreaming what it would be like to be beautiful and dead.
The month is March, 1838. In July, Rosalie will turn fifteen. He finds Love Tragic easier to imagine (and honestly more satisfying) than Love Triumphant.
Rosalie is neither dead nor beautiful, although the former is easier to imagine than the latter. She looks like her father and older brother, but in miniature, and with little feminization of her features. Reclusive, reluctant, burly, she is not as witty and graceful as the rest. Nothing is expected of her except that she is a good girl and a help to her mother. She wants little attention and receives less: the most insignificant child of this exceptional family.
The long winter has just come to an end. The blackbirds have arrived, the robins are waiting, and Rosalie feels the turn in her breath, in her bones. Not entirely happy, but surprisingly close. It feels light. Maybe the bad times are over.
The moment he registers the feeling, he escapes. There is palpable relief every time Dad goes on tour. Mail day is the exception. At noon, the mother will read a letter from her father. The letter will be good or bad. The mother will need her desperately or not at all.
The sky above the trees is pale and bare and extends in reflection over the flat surface of the water. It’s not a hot day, but it’s dry. Rosalie wears her shawl, hat and a pair of sturdy boots that were bought a few years ago for her brother June.
June is the eldest son, just seventeen years old. This morning he went out to the barley fields, because his father had read an article about a new fertilization technique, so he had to try it right away. The father is always impatient to carry out projects in which he does not participate. He often scolds his own father for lack of industry. Dad thinks Grandpa drinks too much.
Grandpa thinks the same of his father. They fight for it non-stop whenever the father is at home, often from their usual chairs in the Churchville tavern, where all these arguments can be fed by the merry god.
Rosalie doesn’t know where her grandfather is right now. Since his younger brother Henry Byron died, Grandpa is often hard to find, and most don’t look. He comes. He goes. Sometimes a meal is missed, but not often. He used to teach children, but really it was only for Henry; none of the other children promise enough to interest him. No June, who is more muscular than smart, a beautiful and brilliant disappointment who was previously expected to be a doctor or a lawyer. Certainly not Rosalie.
From the book “Booth” by Karen Joy Fowler. Copyright © 2022 by Karen Joy Fowler. Published with permission from GP Putnam’s Sons, a footprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
For more information:
- “Booth” by Karen Joy Fowler (Putnam’s), in hardcover, large print, e-book and audio formats, available on Amazon and Indiebound
- karenjoyfowler.com
Add Comment