MARIA HUMMEL is a novelist and poet. Her novel, Still Lives, was a Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club pick, Book of the Month Club pick, and BBC Culture Best Book of 2018, and has been optioned for television and translated into multiple languages. She is also the author of Lesson in Red; Motherland, a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year; and House and Fire, winner of the APR/Honickman Poetry Prize. She has worked and taught at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Stanford University; and the University of Vermont. She lives in Vermont with her husband and sons.
Los Angeles Times, A Must Read Title for January
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"A meditation on female friendship, loneliness, and how to move on
after betrayal, Goldenseal is both melancholy and escapist." —Zibby
Owens, Good Morning America
"Goldenseal is a novel about agency and friendship whose questions
reverberate far beyond its two protagonists and their particular
time and place. Haunting and tragic, it nevertheless lands on a
hopeful note." —Ilana Masad, Los Angeles Times
"Radiant . . . Goldenseal provides plenty of golden moments, an
elixir for these times." —Gordon Dossett, Manchester Journal
"Maria Hummel probes the complexities of female friendship with a
deeply immersive writing style, showcasing her poetic chops and
skill in crafting nuance. In this entrancing novel—her fifth—the
author weaves a complex tapestry of nostalgia, regret, betrayal,
and love against the backdrop of Los Angeles in fading splendor."
—Jenny Bartoy, The Rumpus
"An inventive, immersive book recounting the particular past, old
hurts and late healing of two singular characters." —Sarah McCraw
Crow, BookPage
"In this taut, tense, and layered novel, Hummel deftly examines the
lives of two flawed women against the backdrop of the upheavals of
the twentieth century." —Booklist
"In this powerful saga of a family’s immigration and reinvention,
Hummel explores themes of love, betrayal, and reconciliation . . .
Hummel skillfully evokes the Cranes’ gilded world of hotels and
Hollywood, and deeply explores the women’s fraught friendship from
both points of view. Readers will be rapt." —Publishers Weekly
"Ranging from pre–World War II Europe to the glamorous era of
postwar Hollywood with stops in New York City and a girl’s camp set
in the northern woods, Hummel’s dissection of what went wrong
between Lacey and Edith borrows from both stagecraft and fairy tale
in its analysis. Hummel delivers a lifetime of pathos and
revelation in the course of one night." —Kirkus Reviews
"Suffused with the atmosphere of the past, this exquisitely
evocative tale pays tribute to the glamour of old Hollywood. But
Goldenseal is no mere nostalgia fest. With wit and acumen, Hummel
explores how our divergent interpretations of events can color our
memories, locking us in spirals of alienation . . . Goldenseal is a
thought-provoking read that makes us question the stories we build
from our own memories." —Margot Harrison, Seven Days
“For anyone who has ever had—and lost—that rarest of gifts: a true
friend. A deft, exquisite novel, one that will stay in your heart
like a memory, as if it were one of your very own.” —Barbara
Bourland, author of The Force of Such Beauty
“I devoured Goldenseal, enchanted by the satin prose and dialogue
as smooth as cognac. I loved everything about this story of
exquisite tenderness, passionate friendship and betrayal, the
electric rendezvous of past and future. The backdrop is an L.A.
hotel, haunted by a bygone elegance; but it’s the voices of Edith
and Lacey that truly astonish. They’re still ringing in my ears,
clear as a hotel fountain.” —Miciah Bay Gault, author of Goodnight
Stranger
“Goldenseal is the rare novel whose style perfectly evokes an
earlier era while its meaning feels wholly contemporary. Like the
characters within it, we realize how hard it is to understand our
lives without the wider view that only comes with time. Sweeping
yet intimate, and with characters who feel as alive as our closest
friends, Goldenseal is a marvel.” —Stacey Swann, author of Olympus,
Texas
“Goldenseal is a savagely beautiful novel about the dangers and
damages of passionate lifelong female friendship, intertwined with
a brilliantly wrought elegy for the twentieth century. Hummel is a
powerful writer. This book is extraordinary.” —Kate Christensen,
PEN/Faulkner award-winning author of The Great Man and Welcome
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