Terry Gamble, Press Clippings
JANUARY 25, 2019

“...Gamble seduces with her rich, rollicking portrait of life in Jacksonian Ohio.” More»

The Eulogist Press Release (PDF):

THE EULOGIST: A Novel
By Terry Gamble

“Gamble’s writing is delicate... A sprawling yet richly drawn family saga.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Gamble has crafted an epic tale of antebellum America as seen through the eyes of immigrants. ...
[An] excellent story.” —Booklist
“A standout depiction of family dynamics.” —Publishers Weekly

An exquisitely crafted novel set in Ohio in the decades leading up to the Civil War and narrated by the unapologetically progressive Olivia Givens, THE EULOGIST by Terry Gamble is “an epic tale of antebellum America as seen through the eyes of immigrants.” (Booklist)

The story begins with the Givens family’s arrival in America from Ireland in 1819. Cheated out of their ancestral estate in Northern Ireland, the Givens siblings, alongside their parents, travel down the Ohio River in search of a place to rebuild. They settle in the burgeoning village of Cincinnati, the southernmost city in the free states, with slaveholding Kentucky just over the river.

In what Publishers Weekly calls “a standout depiction of family dynamics,” Olivia and her brothers are soon left to fend for themselves in an unfamiliar land alongside unfamiliar people. James, scholarly and with an entrepreneurial spirit, marries into a prosperous family and soon starts a successful business while Erasmus, with a fondness for both alcohol and attention, seeks God as a self-styled preacher. And then there’s Olivia, seemingly destined for spinsterhood until she enters into a surprising partnership and marriage with Silas Orpheus, a local doctor who spurns social mores and boldly encourages his new wife’s independence and curiosity. More »

ABOUT THE BOOK:
The Eulogist
Terry Gamble
William Morrow
On Sale: January 22, 2019
Hardcover $26.99
ISBN: 9780062839893

Contact: Erin Reback | Senior Publicity Manager
erin.reback@harpercollins.com or 212-207-7425

The Eulogist Podcasts and Interviews

  • February, 2019, Historical Novel Society, Lee Ann Eckhardt Smith interviews Terry. Read »
  • January 24, 2019, Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb, Deborah interviews Terry about her new book. Read »
  • January 23, 2019, New Books Network interview with C. P. Lesley, “The Eulogist opens a window onto a time when the frontier began at the Mississippi and North and South, although divided by no more than a waterway, occupied different mental and social universes. Terry Gamble’s ability to reveal the many sides of complex conflicts and gift for making even difficult characters appealingly human should not be missed.” Listen »
  • January 17, 2019, BreakThru Radio/BTRtoday, Terry is on Book Talk with Kory French. Listen »

The Eulogist Reviews

“Gamble’s third novel (after Good Family) concerns the lives of the Givens siblings, Irish immigrants who start over in 1819 Cincinnati. Olivia, the book’s strong-willed narrator, takes a shine to like-minded doctor Silas Orpheus, who admires her distaste for religion and allows her to surreptitiously dissect corpses with him. Olivia’s older brother, James, a successful candle maker who married rich, is initially reluctant to give his blessing for their marriage, as Silas’s disreputable brother, Eugene, sends a slave, Tilly, in lieu of a proper dowry. Olivia and Tilly become friendly, and Tilly helps her set up her own business doing hair. Olivia’s ambivalence toward slavery dissipates when Silas dies and she meets Eugene’s family on their Kentucky property. When Olivia enlists the help of her younger brother, Erasmus, now a Methodist preacher living on a river encampment, to help lead one of the slaves to freedom, Eugene retaliates by demanding that Tilly be returned. Since Ohio is a free state, an ill-fated trial ensues. Olivia and her family are thereafter pulled into the movement to smuggle slaves to freedom. Gamble adeptly chronicles Olivia’s transformation from a free-thinking but unaffected young woman into a determined widow who wants to indirectly avenge Tilly. This is a standout depiction of family dynamics, and will appeal to fans of fiction set in pre-Civil War America.”

Publishers Weekly, October 2018

More The Eulogist reviews »

Good Family Reviews

“This coming-of-middle-age family novel is a cut above the usual. Recommended as the perfect camp novel of the summer.”

—Library Journal, April 2005

“Rich in elegant reflections and piquant observations, Gamble’s sublime account of a family in disarray and a woman displaced is sheer perfection; she masterfully gives shape and nuance to the intricacies of those relationships that are meant to provide comfort, but that very often mask underlying sorrow.”

—Booklist, May 1, 2005

“Gamble's evocative second novel... paints a poignant tale that is at once tragic and hopeful.”

—Publisher's Weekly, May 9, 2005

Good Family Press Release:

The New York Times Book Review predicts the future for Terry Gamble

Praise for the The Water Dancers, “Gamble’s voice is often fresh and assured, yielding a first novel that bodes well for her second.”

GOOD FAMILY
A NEW NOVEL BY
TERRY GAMBLE

Author of the critically acclaimed The Water Dancers

“Terry Gamble is a gifted writer, elegant, precise, evocative, and humane.  Her work is highly intelligent, skillful, and, most important, full of heart and soul.”

—Anne Lamott

Advanced Praise for Good Family

“Rich in elegant reflections and piquant observations, Gamble’s sublime account of a family in disarray and a woman displaced is sheer perfection; she masterfully gives shape and nuance to the intricacies of those relationships that are meant to provide comfort, but that very often mask underlying sorrow.”

Booklist

“This coming of middle-age-family novel is a cut above the usual.”

Library Journal

Author, Terry Gable lives up to the projected New York Times Book Review praise, in her second novel, Good Family (William Morrow; On Sale: 5/31/05; $24.95), where her strong, assured and elegant voice sings out once again.

Drawing on her experience as a descendent of one of America’s great industrial clans, and evoking the sun-drenched summers she spent at her family’s ancestral “cottage” on Lake Michigan’s North Shore, Gamble creates a compassionate, funny, and poignant tale of one woman’s bittersweet quest to come to terms with her past, assess her present, and find a new path for the future.

Maddie Addison is finally going home.  Eleven years ago, her infant daughter died in the crib at the summer home she grew up in.  Devastated, she moved to New York City, distancing herself from her family.  Upon learning the news from her sister Dana that their mother is dying, Maddie returns to her family’s grand but deteriorating summer place on the shores on Lake Michigan to say good-bye.

Armed with a dwindling inheritance and a feisty skepticism, Maddie must reconnect with the people she has long avoided: her sister, Dana, and a passel of cousins including Sedgie, the sodden thespian; Derek, the gifted artist; and the beautiful Buddhist, Adele.  As she rehashes her past and assesses her present, Maddie must come to terms not only with her mother Evelyn—a woman diminished by years spent accommodating her husband’s rigid mores—but also with the choices that have alienated her from her privileged life.

Good Family is already creating a buzz within the foreign publishing community.  It was recently sold to highly esteemed Dutch and French publishers, De Bezige Bij and Calmann Levy. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Terry Gamble is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Michigan, where she sits on the English advisory board. The author of one previous novel, The Water Dancers, she has had poems, short stories, and essays published in literary journals.  A fifth-generation member of her family to spend part of each summer in northern Michigan, she lives in California with her husband and children.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Good Family
Terry Gamble
William Morrow
On Sale: May 31, 2005
$24.95/336 pages
ISBN: 0060737948

Contact: Trina Rice, 212-207-7692
Trina.Rice@harpercollins.com

Terry Gamble, author of ''The Eulogist'', ''Good Family,'' and ''The Water Dancers''
Photo: Cristiana Ceppas

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