The Lost Legends of New Jersey - by Frederick Reiken (Paperback)

About the Book

A New Jersey teenager deals with his rising success as a star hockey player while his family is falling apart.

Book Synopsis

From the critically acclaimed author of The Odd Sea, a poignant and magical coming-of-age story that "deftly explores the mysteries of love and loss" (Time)

It's the early 1980s and the suburban streets of New Jersey are filled with Bruce Springsteen-era teenagers searching for answers. Anthony Rubin is a rising high school hockey star faced with a family that is falling apart. His father has had an affair with Anthony's best friend's mother and his own mother has abandoned the family for Florida. Confronted with an overwhelming sense of loss, Anthony focuses on the one thing he feels he can save-the tough-talking daughter of a reputed Mafioso, a Juliet to his Romeo. Merging the commonplace and the mythological, Frederick Reiken's richly layered second novel presents unforgettable characters whose lives seem at once familiar and archetypal. Filled with joy as well as heartbreak, The Lost Legends of New Jersey is a rich, resonant tale of the extraordinary magic that can arise within ordinary lives.

Review Quotes

PRAISE FOR" THE LOST LEGENDS OF NEW JERSEY"
"Deeply romantic, funny and tragic . . . Explores how more often than not we are the forces that get in the way of finding our true loves."-Bliss Broyard, The Washington Post book world
"Elegiac and unsparingly direct, funny and poignant . . . A beautiful story of loss, hope and survival."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A wonderful, wonderful, book . . . It is the story of parents and children and strange bonds between them."-The Philadelphia Inquirer


PRAISE FOR" THE ODD SEA"
"The mixture of the grisly and metaphysical that Reiken works so effectively keeps you spellbound by The Odd Sea until its very last page."-The New York Times
"The story has a dark, dreamlike quality, and author Reiken tells it with no melodrama, nor any word out of place." -Time


PRAISE FOR" THE ODD SEA
"The mixture of the grisly and metaphysical that Reiken works so effectively keeps you spellbound by The Odd Sea until its very last page."-The New York Times
"The story has a dark, dreamlike quality, and author Reiken tells it with no melodrama, nor any word out of place." -Time