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From a pathbreaking writer, a thrilling, form-bending novel about a trans healthcare worker whose carefully built life is suddenly imperiled.
Ro and Liam live in a ramshackle cabin in a secluded stretch of Florida. Neither their home nor their sometimes-tumultuous relationship is what the world would call perfect, but to Ro-newly diagnosed with autism and working as a patient navigator for people seeking gender-affirming care-their life, despite the deeply inhospitable political climate, is a kind of paradise.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly what shatters their peace. There's Quentin, the unpredictable teenager for whom Liam and Ro are quasi-parents, who visits on his way to college, where he plans to finally start T. There's the appearance of "Mad Eden," an online fantasy serial about heroic dragon riders that increasingly becomes Ro's obsession. And then there's a seemingly innocuous patient video call that results in consequences both unexpected and grave. This triad of circumstances sends Liam's and Ro's world spinning toward disaster-unless Ro can become the real-life hero their situation demands without betraying who they are and who they love.
With colossal heart and preternatural skill, Morgan Thomas crafts a deliciously destabilizing debut novel that challenges us to confront and reinvent questions of language, sex, prejudice, identity, and the shifting scales of morality. Playing with the possible relationship between autism and time to forge an ingenious new kind of storytelling, Mad Eden imagines, with exhilarating courage, how we might yet joyfully live in a precarious world. Morgan Thomas is the author of the story collection Manywhere, which was a finalist for the PEN/Bingham Prize, the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the Lambda Literary Prize for Transgender Fiction, and the Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. Their writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, and The Yale Review. A graduate of the University of Oregon MFA program, they have also received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and elsewhere.
Ro and Liam live in a ramshackle cabin in a secluded stretch of Florida. Neither their home nor their sometimes-tumultuous relationship is what the world would call perfect, but to Ro-newly diagnosed with autism and working as a patient navigator for people seeking gender-affirming care-their life, despite the deeply inhospitable political climate, is a kind of paradise.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly what shatters their peace. There's Quentin, the unpredictable teenager for whom Liam and Ro are quasi-parents, who visits on his way to college, where he plans to finally start T. There's the appearance of "Mad Eden," an online fantasy serial about heroic dragon riders that increasingly becomes Ro's obsession. And then there's a seemingly innocuous patient video call that results in consequences both unexpected and grave. This triad of circumstances sends Liam's and Ro's world spinning toward disaster-unless Ro can become the real-life hero their situation demands without betraying who they are and who they love.
With colossal heart and preternatural skill, Morgan Thomas crafts a deliciously destabilizing debut novel that challenges us to confront and reinvent questions of language, sex, prejudice, identity, and the shifting scales of morality. Playing with the possible relationship between autism and time to forge an ingenious new kind of storytelling, Mad Eden imagines, with exhilarating courage, how we might yet joyfully live in a precarious world. Morgan Thomas is the author of the story collection Manywhere, which was a finalist for the PEN/Bingham Prize, the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the Lambda Literary Prize for Transgender Fiction, and the Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. Their writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, and The Yale Review. A graduate of the University of Oregon MFA program, they have also received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and elsewhere.
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Reviews
"Brilliant . . . Thomas's gorgeously constructed story explores difficulties of love, as Ro, a refreshingly complex protagonist, weighs their idyllic bliss with Liam against their desire to help those in need. This luminous novel is impossible to forget."
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"This is why I read, for books like this, books that change my life by showing me more of the world than I might've otherwise experienced. It has been a long time since a piece of literary fiction has grabbed me like this, and I'm going to be forever grateful for it . . . spectacular."
Drew Broussard, Lit Hub
"Thomas writes with remarkable imaginative clarity."
Jasmine Vojdani, Vulture