The Gypsy Moth Summer: A Novel

The Gypsy Moth Summer plunges the reader into a hazy, hot daydream of hidden truth, scandal, and racial prejudice. - Jodi Picoult, author of Small Great Things It is the summer of 1992 and a gypsy moth invasion blankets Avalon Island. Ravenous caterpillars disrupt early summer serenity on Avalon, an islet off the coast of Long Island--dropping onto novels left open on picnic blankets, crawling across the T-shirts of children playing games of tag and capture the flag in the island's leafy woods. The caterpillars become a relentless topic of island conversation and the inescapable soundtrack of the season. It is also the summer Leslie Day Marshallùonly daughter of AvalonÆs most prominent familyùreturns with her husband, a botanist, and their children to live in ôThe Castle,ö the island's grandest estate. LeslieÆs husband Jules is African-American, and their children bi-racial, and islanders from both sides of the tracks form fast and dangerous opinions about the new arrivals. Maddie Pencott LaRosa straddles those tracks: a teen queen with roots in the tony precincts of East Avalon and the crowded working class corner of West Avalon, home to Grudder Aviation factory, the island's bread-and-butter and birthplace of generations of bombers and war machines. Maddie falls in love with Brooks, LeslieÆs and JulesÆ son, and that love feels as urgent to Maddie as the questions about the new and deadly cancers showing up across the island. Could Grudder Aviation, the pride of the islandùand its patriarch, the Colonelùbe to blame? As the gypsy moths burst from cocoons in flocks that seem to eclipse the sun, MaddieÆs and BrooksÆ passion for each other grows and she begins planning a life for them off Avalon Island. Vivid with young lovers, gangs of anxious outsiders; a plotting aged matriarch and her husband, a demented military patriarch; and a troubled young boy, each seeking his or her own refuge, escape and revenge, Julia Fierro's The Gypsy Moth Summer is about love, gaps in understanding, and the struggle to connect: within families; among friends; between neighbors and entire generations.

• | Author: Julia Fierro
• | Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• | Publication Date: Jun 05, 2018
• | Number of Pages: 400 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback/Fiction
• | ISBN-10: 125008752X
• | ISBN-13: 9781250087522