CROWN

In the post-Covid-19 fragility of a trailer park in the Southwest, a pregnant 25-year-old woman and her 9-year-old twins summon the determination to move for the umpteenth time.

Jude Woods, whose waitressing job was cut in the pandemic, is in her last stage of pregnancy and writes “N/A” on a hospital form under “father.” This is no time for an eviction—they have built a home here—but Jude and the twins, Virginia and Evan, are used to navigating calamity. Collectively, they have “a catalogue of left-behind places.” They know the bitterness of a stranger mouthing “trash.” The novel is also bursting with ordinary family life. Virginia and Evan know their wild, fragrant landscape as well as a botanist would. As resilient as their mother, they have their own personalities but act as a gutsy team. Through the children’s and Jude’s first-person narratives, Bromiley weaves bewitching, unexpected phrases—“the rushaway road,” “raven-silent,” “the beat-drum heart of the city.” She captures the family’s intimacy: invented games, bickering, preparing for the baby, hatching plots for adventure. The adventure becomes life or death when Jude, in unexpected labor, leaves the twins to wait for her in a remote spot, knowing they may be taken away by authorities. Virginia and Evan’s quest to get home through unknown territory builds to a taut climax that will leave readers breathless. Bromiley is also a master of the rhythms and realities of working-class life, in which keeping yourself together is a daily negotiation with bureaucracy and a chafing reminder that others have it worse. Though this is a story of contemporary life, it lives within the rich tradition of the literature and song of American struggle. This could be a story of the Dust Bowl or a city shelter; Jude could be the mother in Dorothea Lange’s indelible photo.

Full of ordinary royalty, shining with the triumph of staying human and extending grace even in deprivation.