In the Midnight Room
A Novel
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher 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) about four vivid and complicated women in Las Vegas whose lives become connected by secrets, courage, tragedies, and small acts of kindness.
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 60 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McBride's (We Are Called to Rise) second novel tells the moving, intertwined stories of four women in Las Vegas. In 1960, June and her husband, Del, run the El Capitan casino and draw crowds with talented singer Eddie Knox. June's life seems blessed until a tragedy strikes that will upend everything and force her to reconsider running the casino. Jumping forward to the 1990s, Honorata is a mail order bride from the Philippines, sold by her own uncle, who now lives a comfortable life in Las Vegas as the housewife of a wealthy man until she wins the jackpot at El Capitan. Coral is a music teacher in a Las Vegas school and stops by the casino frequently, drawn by the memories of her father, who was Del's best friend. Meeting up with her siblings, past events are revealed and considered in a new light, and Coral discovers how to move beyond old hang-ups. In the last section, taking place in 2010, Engracia works at the now-decrepit El Capitan as a housekeeper to support her young son until her heart is broken by an unexpected loss. In addition to being linked by El Capitan, this diverse group of complex women intersect in surprising ways as the years pass. Las Vegas itself is a character in this immersive novel that effectively exhibits the changes to the city throughout the decades. This is a tale of love, loss, and the unexpected, unheralded ways that lives meet around blackjack and roulette tables.
