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Canongate is to publish the second novel from rare book dealer and former Man Booker judge Rick Gekoski simultaneously in the UK, US and Canada.
Editor Jo Dingley acquired world rights including audio to A Long Island Story from Peter Straus at Rogers, Coleridge and White. Canongate will publish in hardback simultaneously in the UK, US and Canada through Ingram PGW/PGC in July 2018.
In A Long Island Story, ti is 1953, a heat wave is sweeping across America and the Grossmans – Ben, Addie and their two children – are moving their lives from the political heart of Washington DC to suburban Long Island. Benny was a successful lawyer in the Department of Justice, but all that has come tumbling down. With the McCarthy era of paranoia, persecution, and propaganda at its height, his past has come back to haunt him, forcing him to pack up his family and leave the capital behind.
With their future uncertain, life in Long Island starts to open old wounds for Ben and Addie, both start to wonder if they were meant for more, whether their future might look different than they planned, and whether their marriage – their family – is worth fighting for.
Gekoski’s first novel, Darke, was published by Canongate in the UK in 2016. Darke publishes in the US, distributed by Ingram PGW on the 7th November with a launch party at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York on 14th November.
Dingley said: "With echoes of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road, A Long Island Story is a portrait of a marriage in crisis, of a unique and fascinating period in US history and of a seemingly perfect family fighting their demons behind closed doors. With Brexit, Trump, and the rise of the far right across Europe, Rick’s novel has a lot to tell us about how the political climate affects our personal lives, and the lives of our children."
Gekoski said: "When I was 10, under the shadow of McCarthyism, my family was uprooted from Washington DC. This novel revisits that time, which created intense problems of where to live, and how. This is a book I have wanted to write for almost 50 years, but couldn’t, until I realised that what was needed to tell these complex truths was a work of fiction, not a memoir. To be published once again by Canongate? Bliss."