Three Junes

Winner of the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction

Three Junes is a vividly textured symphonic novel set on both sides of the Atlantic during three fateful summers in the lives of a Scottish family. In June of 1989, Paul McLeod, the recently widowed patriarch, becomes infatuated with a young American artist while traveling through Greece and is compelled to relive the secret

sorrows of his marriage. Six years later, Pauls death reunites his sons at Tealing, their idyllic childhood home, where Fenno, the eldest, faces a choice that puts him at the center of his familys future. A lovable, slightly repressed gay man, Fenno leads the life of an aloof expatriate in the West Village, running a shop filled with books and birdwatching gear. He believes himself safe from all emotional entanglements—until a worldly neighbor presents him with an extraordinary gift and a seductive photographer makes him an unwitting subject. Each man draws Fenno into territories of the heart he has never braved before, leading him toward an almost unbearable loss that will reveal to him the nature of love.

Love in its limitless forms—between husband and wife, between lovers, between people and animals, between parents and children—is the force that moves these characters lives, which collide again, in yet another June, over a Long Island dinner table. This time it is Fenno who meets and captivates Fern, the same woman who captivated his father in Greece ten years before. Now pregnant with a son of her own, Fern, like Fenno and Paul before him, must make peace with her past to embrace her future. Elegantly detailed yet full of emotional suspense, often as comic as it is sad, Three Junes is a glorious triptych about how we learn to live, and live fully, beyond incurable grief and betrayals of the heart—how family ties, both those were born into and those we make, can offer us redemption and joy.

"The artful construction of this seductive novel and the mature, compassionate wisdom permeating it would be impressive for a seasoned writer, but it's all the more remarkable in a debut....In this dazzling portrait of family life, Glass establishes her literary credentials with ingenuity and panache." Publishers Weekly

"Fiercely realized. . .luxuriant in its emotional comprehension and the idea, or promise, that anything might happen." Boston Globe

"Readers may be reminded of Evelyn Waugh and, especially, Angus Wilson by the rich characterizations and narrative sweep that grace this fine debut....Glass makes it all work, though the parts are not uniformly credible or compelling. Nevertheless, a rather formidable debut." Kirkus Reviews

"Many undercurrents and emotions run through this mesmerizing novel....Brimming with a marvelous cast of intricate characters set in an assortment of scintillating backdrops, Glass's philosophically introspective novel is highly intelligent and well written." Elsa Gaztambide, Booklist

"[A] strong and memorable debut novel....Alternately joyful and sad, this exploration of modern relationships and the families people both inherit or create for themselves is highly recommended for all fiction collections." Library Journal

Julia Glass's first novel, Three Junes, won the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction and was also a selection of ABC/ Good Morning America's READ THIS! Book Club. Her fiction has been honored with a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, three Nelson Algren Fiction Awards, the Tobias Wolff Award, and the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society Medal for Best Novella. She is spending the 2004-2005 academic year as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, where she is finishing her second novel, A Piece of Cake. Currently, she lives outside Boston with her family.

From the Trade Paperback edition.