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Jane Hamilton, award-winning author of
The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World, is
back in top form with a richly textured novel about a tragic
accident and its effects on two generations of a family.
When Aaron Maciver’s beautiful young wife,
Madeline, suffers brain damage in a bike accident, she is
left with the intellectual powers of a six-year-old. In the
years that follow, Aaron and his second wife care for Madeline
with deep tenderness and devotion as they raise two children
of their own.
Narrated by Aaron’s son, Mac, When
Madeline Was Young chronicles the Maciver family through
the decades, from Mac’s childhood growing up with Madeline
and his cousin Buddy in Wisconsin through the Vietnam War,
through Mac’s years as a husband with children of his own,
and through Buddy’s involvement with the subsequent Gulf Wars.
Jane Hamilton, with her usual humor and keen observations
of human relationships, deftly explores the Maciver’s unusual
situation and examines notions of childhood (through Mac and
Buddy’s actual youth as well as Madeline’s infantilization)
and a rivalry between Buddy’s and Mac’s families that spans
decades and various wars. She captures the pleasures and frustrations
of marriage and family, and she exposes the role that past
relationships, rivalries, and regrets inevitably play in the
lives of adults.
Inspired in part by Elizabeth Spencer’s
Light in the Piazza, Hamilton offers an honest and
exquisite portrait of how a family tragedy forever shapes
and alters the boundaries of love.
JANE HAMILTON is the author of The
Book of Ruth, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for First
Fiction, A Map of the World, a New York Times
Notable Book of the Year and named one of the top ten books
of the year by Entertainment Weekly, Publishers
Weekly, the Miami Herald, and People magazine;
Disobedience; and The Short History of a Prince.
She lives in Rochester, Wisconsin.
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