ABBEVILLE
A Novel

by Jack Fuller

Available in paperback in August!
Publication date August 25

Unbridled Books
www.unbridledbooks.com

ISBN-13:  978-1-932961-90-4
$14.95 Trade Paperback

ISBN-13:  978-1-932961-47-8
$24.95 Hardcover

Fiction set in a small town in the Midwest. A multi-generational story of an Illinois  family caught up in the events of history and the financial crises of the Great Depression and the present day.

 ”ABBEVILLE  is wonderful, an evocative and involving tale about the meanings of success and failure across the generations and the values that unite a family through time. A terrific novel.”  – Scott Turow

“A wonderful novel.  ABBEVILLE put me in mind of Theodore Dreiser at his most tender, far-seeing, and astute. I hope it finds the widest possible audience.” — Ward Just

Buy this book from your favorite locally owned and operated Midwest independent bookseller!  Click here for the new searchable directory of our member bookstores.

MBA Bookseller Information

Order from your Abraham Associates rep or through wholesalers. ABBEVILLE originally was promoted by the Midwest Booksellers Association and Unbridled Books as a Midwest Connections Pick starting in July 2008.

ABBEVILLE is an excellent choice for reading groups, and Unbridled Books has a reading group guide and author Q&A available — downloads below. We encourage you to recommend it to your store’s book clubs and reading groups!

Author Jack Fuller  is available for events on a limited basis, and he is happy to do phoners with book clubs and reading groups. Unbridled Books can provide content for your store newsletter or blog about ABBEVILLE and its relevance to our current economic crisis.  For more information, contact Caitlin Hamilton Summie at Unbridled Books, caitlin@unbridledbooks.com .

MBA and the publisher would love to have your comments, reviews, and praise for this fascinating book.  Please send them to us so we can share your endorsements with your fellow MBA booksellers and with your customers!

Downloads

• Reading Group Guide (PDF)
• Q&A with the Author (PDF)
• Small B&W Print Ad (PDF) — hardcover
• Reviews and Quotes on the Book (PDF)
• Book Photo (JPG) — trade paperback
• Book Photo (JPG) — hardcover
• Author Photo (JPG)
• Midwest Connections Marketing Info & Rebate Form (PDF) — rebates were available for the hardcover only
• Midwest Connections Generic Display Materials

About the Book

“George Bailey’s security vanished with the dot.com crash. His grandfather lived through the 1929 market crash and subsequent run on his bank and seemed to thrive in the years that followed. Not knowing what else to do, George returns to his grandfather’s house and his grandfather’s town, hoping to find, in his memories, a way forward. This is a wonderful story of America’s heartland. It reminds us that even though we fence it and cultivate it, we never really tame it; and that counting chickens before they hatch is still a fool’s game.”
- Keri Holmes, Kaleidoscope: Our Focus Is You Bookstore (IA)

“ABBEVILLE is wonderful, an evocative and involving tale about the meanings of success and failure across the generations and the values that unite a family through time.  A terrific novel.”
- Scott Turow

Until the dot.com bubble burst, George Bailey never gave much thought to why his grandfather seemed so happy. But then George’s wealth vanished, rocking his self-confidence, threatening his family’s security and making his adolescent son’s difficult life even more painful. Returning to the little Central Illinois farm town of Abbeville, where his grandfather had prospered and then fallen into ruin, flattened during the Depression, George seeks out the details of this remarkable man’s rise, fall, and spiritual rebirth, hoping he might find a way to recover himself.

ABBEVILLE sweeps through the history of late-19th through early-21st century America—among loggers stripping the North Woods bare, at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, with French soldiers at the Battle of Verdun, into the abyss of the Depression, and finally toward the new millennium’s own nightmares. At the same time it examines life at its most intimate. How can one hold onto meaning amidst the brutally indifferent cycles of war and peace, flood and drought, boom and bust, life and death?

In clean, evocative prose that reveals the complexity of people’s moral and spiritual lives, Fuller tells the simple story of a man riding the crests and chasms of the 20th century, struggling through personal grief, war, and material failure to find a place where the spirit may repose. An American story about rediscovering where we’ve been and how we’ve come to be who we are today, Abbeville tells the tale of the world in small, of one man’s pilgrimage to come to terms with himself while learning to embrace the world around him.

About the Author

Jack Fuller has published six critically acclaimed novels and one book of non-fiction about journalism. He has been a legal affairs writer, a war correspondent in Vietnam, a Washington correspondent, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer. At the Chicago Tribune he served as editor of the editorial page, editor, and publisher. When he retired, he was president of Tribune Publishing Co.