"In the opening pages of Laura McBride’s new novel, June Stein dives off the Haverstraw Bridge and straight into the reader’s imagination. I love how June, and the vivid, complicated women around her, often fail to act in their own best interests while they still win our affection and admiration. And I love how McBride brings to life the fast-changing city of Las Vegas through their intertwined stories. ‘Round Midnight is a passionate, gripping and beautifully written novel."
Description
“If McBride is trying to prove—that if you change one life, you change the world—she succeeds magnificently.”—Booklist
From the author of the acclaimed novel We Are Called to Rise comes a “jewel of a novel” (BookPage) set in Las Vegas, tracing six decades of courage, secrets, and the small acts of kindness that change lives.
Fun-loving and rebellious, twenty-one-year-old June Stein abandons the safe world of her New Jersey childhood for edgy 1950s Las Vegas. For the next sixty years, June will dare to live boldly. She will upend conventions, risk her heart and her life, rear a child, lose a child, love more than one man, and stand up for more than one woman.
June’s story will intertwine with those of three unlikely strangers: a one-time mail-order bride from the Philippines, a high school music teacher, and a young mother from Mexico working as a hotel maid. Knit together around June’s explosive secret, they forge a future that none of them foresee.
This jubilant, compassionate novel explores the unexpected ways that life connects us, changes us, and even perfects us. A powerful story of lust and of hope, of redemption and of compassion, In the Midnight Room is a smart, sagacious novel about womanhood, family bonds, and how we live in America now.
Reviews
"Laura McBride reminds us of the invisible threads that bind us together as she weaves the stories of four very different women into a haunting tale of love, loss, and the power to endure. A compelling, transporting, and deeply wise novel. I was enthralled from the first page. Laura McBride is a stunning storyteller."
"I’m not one to pull out the term “Great American Novel,” but Laura McBride’s sublime ‘ROUND MIDNIGHT demands nothing less. Gorgeous, engrossing, moving, and at times wickedly funny, this brilliant novel pulled me in and didn’t let me go until the shattering final sentence. This is the novel you need to read right now."
"[A] jewel of a novel. Haunting and unpredictable, ’Round Midnight is the beautifully told story of how fates intertwine in ways we can’t plan."