Pasadena - by David Ebershoff (Paperback)

About the Book

Ebershoff's sweeping, richly imagined novel is set against the backdrop of Southern California during the first half of the 20th century and charts its rapid transformation from frontier to suburb. A Book Sense 76 selection.

Book Synopsis

From the award-winning author of The Danish Girl and The Rose City, Pasadena tells the story of Linda Stamp, a fishergirl born in 1903 on a coastal onion farm, and the three men who change her life: her jealous brother, Edmund; Bruder, the orphan Linda's father brings home from World War I; and a Pasadena orange rancher named Willis Poore. The novel spans Linda's adventurous and romantic life, weaving the tales of her Mexican mother and her German-born father with those of the rural Pacific Coast of her youth and of the small, affluent city, Pasadena, that becomes her home. Pasadena is a novel of passion and history, about a woman and a place in perpetual transformation.

Review Quotes

"Wuthering Heights meets East of Eden."
--The Wall Street Journal

"Pasadena is like a grand opera. . . . [David] Ebershoff must be applauded for the grandness of his design, for grand characters, For grand setting, and . . . for his grand vision of Pasadena as the center of 'real history.'"
--Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Both a triumph of historical re-creation and a full-bodied romance . . . You feel that, if you were transported back to Pasadena in 1925, Ebershoff's book would enable you to find your way around perfectly."
--Baltimore Sun

"Ebershoff's crafting of characters is so sharp, so perfect, that we ache for most of them. . . . [He] has us in thrall, and every word he writes counts."
--Fort Worth Star-Telegram

"Full of detail and unerring language . . . magically evokes the rich and varied landscape of Southern California.'"
--The Boston Sunday Globe

"A luxurious tragedy . . . gorgeous, full of romance and disaster . . . Pasadena is a novel to get lost in."
--The Christian Science Monitor

About the Author

David Ebershoff is the author of the novels The 19th Wife, Pasadena, and The Danish Girl, and a short-story collection, The Rose City. His fiction has won a number of awards, including the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Ferro-Grumley Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. His books have been translated into twenty languages to critical acclaim.The 19th Wife was made into a television movie and The Danish Girl is under development as a feature film. Ebershoff teaches in the graduate writing program at Columbia University and is an editor-at-large at Random House. He lives in New York City.