Reunion by Elise Juska

Please join us for a special event on Tuesday August 6 at 6:00pm featuring Elise Juska to celebrate the release of her novel Reunion. Elise will be in conversation with author Meredith Hall.

From the beloved author of the “uniquely poignant” (Entertainment Weekly) novel The Blessings comes a gripping story about three friends in their forties forced to reckon with their lives during a college reunion in coastal Maine.

It’s June 2021 and three old college friends are heading to New England and the twenty-fifth reunion that was delayed the year before. Hope a stay-at-home mom is desperate for a return to her beloved campus a reprieve from her tense marriage and the stresses of pandemic parenting. Adam is hesitant to leave his bucolic but secluded life with his wife and their young sons. Single mother Polly hasn’t been back to campus in more than twenty years and has no interest in returning—but changes her mind when her struggling teenage son suggests a road trip.

But the reunion isn’t what any of them had envisioned. Hope always upbeat is no longer able to downplay the pressures of life at home or the cracks in her longstanding friendships. Adam finds himself energized by the memory of his carefree reckless younger self—which only reminds him how much has changed since those halcyon days. Polly cannot ignore the ghosts of her college years including a closely guarded secret. When the weekend takes a startling turn all three find themselves reckoning with the past—and how it will bear on the future.

Beautifully observed and insightful Reunion is a page-turning novel about the highs and lows of friendship from a writer at the height of her powers.

Elise Juska’s previous novels include If We Had Known and The Blessings. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the Missouri Review Gettysburg Review Ploughshares the Hudson Review Electric Literature and other outlets. She is the recipient of the Alice Hoffman Prize from Ploughshares and her work has been cited by the Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prize anthologies. She lives with her family outside Philadelphia where she is a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of the Arts.

Meredith Hall is the award-winning author of the novel Beneficence and the memoir Without a Map which was instantly recognized as a classic of the genre and became a New York Times bestseller. Without a Map was named a best book of the year by Kirkus and BookSense and was an Elle magazine Reader’s Pick of the Year. Hall was a recipient of the 2004 Gift of Freedom Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation. Her work has appeared in Five Points The Gettysburg Review The Kenyon Review The Southern Review The New York Times and many other publications. Hall divides her time between Maine and California.

Host or Publisher Longfellow Books