Current Read

Fort Collins Reads’ 2018 author Jennifer Egan is best known for her 2011 novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, which earned the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, among other accolades. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker  and Harper’s, and her investigative journalism pieces have appeared in The New York Times magazine.

Fort Collins Reads 2018 selection is her latest release, Manhattan Beach. The long-awaited follow-up to Goon Squad, this novel finds Egan exploring much different territory than its predecessor. Focusing on Anna, a young woman on the home front in World War II who defies gender stereotypes to become an underwater welder for the U.S. Navy, the novel is set against the rich background of War-era New York. With subplots that delve into the seedy world of organized crime, romance in the radio era and fractured family life, it’s already been heralded by the press as one of 2018’s most important novels to read: “This is a novel that deserves to join the canon of New York stories,” The New York Times proclaimed.