Inspired by true events surrounding an historic Florida citrus season and the civil rights struggle, Goldens Are Here offers a glimpse of the sea changes occurring in Florida and the nation in the 1960s through the prism of one family’s negotiations for the land, with their neighbors, and with each other.
It’s 1961, and everything is changing in Florida. Jim Crow strains to maintain its hold, the Cold War escalates, the US space program hits its stride, and the Jewish Goldens—determined to begin a new pastoral life along Florida’s central east coast—are just trying to hold on to their small orange grove near the excitement of Cape Canaveral. In Goldens Are Here, Andrew Furman imagines with great empathy the individual members of the Golden family, their unique struggles and dreams, during a single tumultuous citrus season. Isaac Golden must reckon between his ambition to create the perfect fruit and the business realities bearing down upon him given the booming postwar demand for cheap frozen concentrate. His beautiful wife, Melody, finds herself testing the boundaries that had so clearly governed her more conventional life in suburban Philadelphia, and their chronically ill son, Eli, wishes only to muster his strength so that he might enjoy the wide-open outdoors and see a bobcat. Inspired by true events surrounding a historic Florida citrus season and the civil rights struggle in a region not immediately associated with the movement, Goldens Are Here offers a glimpse of the sea changes occurring in Florida and the nation in the 1960s through the prism of one family’s negotiations with the land, their neighbors, and each other.
Praise
“Aromatic and heady, fearless and far-reaching, this complicated novel imagines Florida fifty years ago, with all the beauty and all the threat of the era concentrated in a fine story of courage and place. The setting is mythic Florida, in an orange grove, in the middle of social transformation. Kudos to Furman for recreating this rich and unbelievable world. What I loved most was the book’s feast of language, its flavor and sensuality. And of course I loved Janisse.”
—Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and The Seed Underground
“‘There was something glorious about an examination with a stethoscope,’ muses Isaac Golden, the searching, hopeful patriarch in Andrew Furman’s novel, Goldens Are Here. ‘This laying on of hands. This reverent silence. . . . Here was the real, Isaac thought.’ Readers looking for the real will find it in Furman’s careful attunement to place (tamarind, lantana, wax myrtle; Parson Brown, Hamlin, Valencia) and time (the Space Age and the Civil Rights struggle). Furman gives this moment in our collective history its due with nuance, warmth, and a palpable sense of family grief and love.”
—Joni Tevis, author of The World Is On Fire: Scrap, Treasure, and Songs of Apocalypse
“Andrew Furman’s Goldens Are Here is a smart, generous, and engrossing look at the Civil Rights struggle in Florida. A fascinating meditation on what it means to be a neighbor in a highly unjust world.” —Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure and Super Sad True Love Story
About the Author — finalist for the ASLE Environmental Book Award
Andrew Furman is a professor of English at Florida Atlantic University and teaches in its creative writing MFA program. He is the author, most recently, of the environmental memoir Bitten: My Unexpected Love Affair with Florida (2014), which was named a Finalist for the ASLE Environmental Book Award, and My Los Angeles in Black and (Almost) White (2010). His fiction and creative nonfiction frequently engages with the Florida outdoors, but he has also written about Jewish identity, basketball, lighthouses, swimming, and cast-iron cookware. His essays and stories have appeared in such publications as the Oxford American, The Southern Review, Ecotone, Poets & Writers, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Agni Online, Terrain.org, and The Florida Review. He lives in south Florida with his family.
Advance Praise
Goldens Are Here was listed by Kurt Baumeister in the article “The Most Anticipated Small Press Books of 2018.” “Andrew Furman’s Goldens Are Here, inspired by true events surrounding an historic Florida citrus season and the lynching of a civil rights worker in Brevard County, offering a glimpse of the sea changes bearing down upon Florida and the nation in the 1960’s through the prism of one fictional family’s negotiations with the land, their neighbors, and with each other. April 10, 2018 from Green Writers Press.”
Goldens Are Here was featured in The Jewish Chronicle in American correspondent, Erika Dreifus’ article “Looking Forward to a Year of Good Reading.” ”When discussing Goldens Are Here by Andrew Furman (April, Green Writers Press), I should disclose that the author and I have been friends for about 15 years. This novel takes readers back to the 1960s, the civil-rights movement, and an historic citrus season. Through the prism of the Jewish Golden family, it promises to offer a view of the changes occurring in Florida and across the country during one of America’s most turbulent decades.”
SPECS
364 pages; Paperback Original
6 x 9; ISBN: 978-0-9990766-2-0
$21.95; Ebook/Audio to come
Film Rights being considered.
Publication Date: April 20, 2018
Distributor: Midpoint Trade Books / Ingram, Baker & Taylor.
Rights sold: All rights available.
Rights Contact: Dede Cummings, dede@greenwriterspress.com
BISACS: FICT/Historical/Jewish/Civil Rights