Novels
- The Danish Girl (2000)
- Pasadena (2002)
- The 19th Wife (2008)
Collections
- The Rose City (2001)
Novels Book Covers
Collections Book Covers
David Ebershoff Books Overview
The Danish Girl
A shockingly original first novel about one of the most passionate and unusual love stories of the 20th centuryInspired by the true story of Danish painter Einar Wegener and his California born wife, this tender portrait of a marriage asks ‘What do you do when someone you love wants to change?’Set against the glitz and decadence of 1920s Copenhagen, Dresden, and Paris, The Danish Girl eloquently portrays the intimacy that defines a marriage and the nearly forgotten story of the love between a man who discovers that he is, in fact, a woman and the woman who would sacrifice anything for him. Uniting fact and fiction into a unique romantic vision, The Danish Girl explores the very heart of what connects men and women and what separates them. But this book, like Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha, transcends the confines of sex and gender and historical place. Ultimately, The Danish Girl‘s lush prose and generous emotional insight make it, after the last page is turned, a love story that no reader will soon forget. With The Danish Girl, David Ebershoff will make one of the year’s dazzling literary debuts.
Pasadena
Pasadena, David Ebershoff’s sweeping, richly imagined novel, is set against the backdrop of Southern California during the first half of the twentieth century and charts its rapid transformation from frontier to suburb. At the story s center is Linda Stamp, a fishergirl born in 1903 on a coastal onion farm in San Diego s North County, and the three men who upend her life and vie for her affection: her pragmatic farming brother, Edmund; Captain Willis Poore, a Pasadena rancher with a heroic military past; and Bruder, the mysterious young man Linda s father brings home from World War I. Pasadena spans Linda s adventurous and romantic life, weaving the tales of her Mexican mother and her German born father with those of the rural Pacific Coast of her youth and of the small, affluent city, Pasadena, that becomes her home. When Linda s father returns from the war to the fishing hamlet of Baden Baden by the Sea with the darkly handsome Bruder, she glimpses love and a world beyond her own. Linda follows Bruder to the seemingly greener pastures of Pasadena, where he is the foreman of a flourishing orange ranch, the homestead and inheritance of the charming bachelor Willis Poore. As Willis begins to woo her with the promise of money and stature, Linda is torn between the two men, unable to differentiate truth from appearance. Linda s fateful decision alters the course of many lives and harbingers a sea change just on the horizon, for Pasadena and its inhabitants. Infused with the rich sense of place for which Ebershoff s work is known, Pasadena remembers a Southern California whose farms edged the Pacific, where citrus dominated the economy, and where America s tycoons wintered in a vital city s grand hotels. Recalling the California character of self invention that informs the work of John Steinbeck and Joan Didion, Pasadena is a novel of passion and history about a woman and a place in perpetual transformation.
The 19th Wife
Faith, I tell them, is a mystery, elusive to many, and never easy to explain. Sweeping and lyrical, spellbinding and unforgettable, David Ebershoff’s The 19th Wife combines epic historical fiction with a modern murder mystery to create a brilliant novel of literary suspense. It is 1875, and Ann Eliza Young has recently separated from her powerful husband, Brigham Young, prophet and leader of the Mormon Church. Expelled and an outcast, Ann Eliza embarks on a crusade to end polygamy in the United States. A rich account of a family s polygamous history is revealed, including how a young woman became a plural wife. Soon after Ann Eliza s story begins, a second exquisite narrative unfolds a tale of murder involving a polygamist family in present day Utah. Jordan Scott, a young man who was thrown out of his fundamentalist sect years earlier, must reenter the world that cast him aside in order to discover the truth behind his father s death. And as Ann Eliza s narrative intertwines with that of Jordan s search, readers are pulled deeper into the mysteries of love and faith. From the Hardcover edition.
The Rose City
David Ebershoff’s shockingly original debut novel, The Danish Girl, which explored the boundaries of love and gender, was hailed by critics around the world. The Boston Globe called it ‘heartbreaking and unforgettable…
a complete triumph’ and the Chicago Tribune praised it for its ‘startling refinement and beauty.’ His first collection, The Rose City combines a bouquet of vivid characters with Ebershoff’s trademark emotional insight and lush prose in seven stories about young men and boys making their way in a chaotic world. Often tragic but lacking in despair, The Rose City delves into the tribulations of everyday life, identity, and sexuality. Each story is about someone from or moving to Pasadena, a part of California, as the character in the title story says, ‘Where the real history is.’ In ‘Chuck Paa’ a young man in flight from his misdemeanant mother seeks and finds employment in an upscale world which can never quite become his own. In the title story, ‘The Rose City,’ remembrance and a shared lost love bring together ex lovers who reunite to reflect on their past, their present, and what lies ahead. What they discover is that relationships rarely turn out the way you want them to especially when your ex has moved on to a house and home life and you’re left alone, foot tapping, waiting around for Mr. Right. With the same insight and daring of The Danish Girl, The Rose City secures David Ebershoff’s reputation as a writer of rare talent and sensitivity.
Related Authors