Golden Age by Jane Smiley

Golden Age: A Novel (Last Hundred Years Book 3) by Jane Smiley --- 443 pages

The final volume in Smiley's Last Hundred Years trilogy (following Some Luck and Early Warning  provides both a satisfying and an unsettling conclusion to the story of the Langdon family.

Golden Age covers the years 1987 to 2019. It starts with the family gathering at the farm in Iowa to welcome in a longlost son. It ends with the quiet passing of the family's mercurial matriarch.

Along the way we see not just the story of one family straying through the years, but the story of a country cast adrift from its understanding of itself. The story ends ambiguously: can the Langdons, can the nation, set a new course before the tide turns irreversibly?

A wonderful achievement by a masterful story teller, mixing the small happenings of ordinary lives with the larger forces of global change.  This is an American saga.

Click HERE to read an interview with Jane Smiley from the Chicago Tribune.

Click HERE to read the review from the Washington Post.

Click HERE to read the review from the San Francisco SFGate.

 Click HERE to read the review from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Early Warning by Jane Smiley

Early Warning: A Novel by Jane Smiley --- 476 pages

Early Warning is the second volume in Smiley’s Last Hundred Years trilogy. The story follows the Langdon family of Iowa through the decades of 20th century America. Book I, Some Luck, began after the First World War when returning veteran Walter Langdon married Rosanna Vogel, the daughter of the neighboring farm family. It ended in 1953 with Walter's death. Early Warning opens with the family gathering for Walter's funeral. Walter and Rosanna’s children are now scattered across the country, with children of their own. In the course of Book II we witness their marriages and their children growing up amid the social traumas, political upheaveals and economic swings of the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties. The story line encompasses both public events and private lives, but what ties all together are the family relationships that endure through good times and bad.

A wonderfully compelling, compassionate but never sentimental, look at the American experience through the lives of one extended family.  The final volume is due out in October. Smiley is a master story teller at the peak of her powers.  

Click HERE to read a review from the Washington Post.

Click HERE to read a review from the San Francisco Gate.

Click HERE to listen to an interview of Jane Smiley talking about her book on NPR's Diane Rehm Show.

Some Luck by Jane Smiley

Some Luck: A Novel by Jane Smiley --- 395 pages

I had the great good fortune to hear Jane Smiley speak a few years ago, and since she grew up in St. Louis, I've always followed her career and read her books.

With this book I think she has now firmly established herself in the pantheon of Great American Authors. Not only is it a subtly crafted work of literature but it also has great popular appeal, for it is irresistibly readable. The lives of the Langdons, an Iowa farm family, provide a personal narrative of the American experience in the 20th century. Some Luck begins in the aftermath of World War I, and proceeds through the Great Depression, World War II, the Atomic Age and the beginning of the Cold War, ending in 1953.

Best of all, this is the first of a projected trilogy, The Last Hundred Years, that will follow the family from 1919 to 2019, 100 chapters, one for each of the 100 years, across three volumes. The second is scheduled for publication next spring and the third in the fall of 2015. This first book came out the beginning of October and has already been listed for the National Book Award.

Click HERE to read the Chicago Tribune review of Some Luck.

Click HERE to read an interview with Jane Smiley in the New York Times.

Click HERE to listen to an interview with Jane Smiley on Iowa Public Radio.

Click HERE to watch Smiley give a  reading from Some Luck followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience.