Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty
About this audiobook
From the award–winning author of No One Is Here Except All of Us comes an imaginative novel about a wealthy New England family in the 1960s and ’70s that suddenly loses its fortune—and its bearings.
Labor Day 1976, Martha’s Vineyard. Summering at the family beach house along this moneyed coast of New England, Fern and Edgar—married with three children—are happily preparing for a family birthday celebration when they learn that the unimaginable has occurred: there is no more money. More specifically, there’s no more money in the estate of Fern’s recently deceased parents, which, as the sole source of Fern and Edgar’s income, had allowed them to live this beautiful, comfortable life despite their professed anti-money ideals. Quickly, the once-charmed family unravels. In distress and confusion, Fern and Edgar are each tempted away on separate adventures: she on a road trip with a stranger, he on an ill-advised sailing voyage with another woman. The three children are left for days with no guardian whatsoever in an improvised Neverland helmed by the tender, witty, and resourceful Cricket, age nine.
Brimming with humanity and wisdom, humor and bite, and imbued with both the whimsical and the profound, Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty is a story of American wealth, class, family, and mobility approached by award–winner Ramona Ausubel with a breadth of imagination and understanding that is fresh, surprising, and exciting.
About the author
Ramona Ausubel grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine where she won the Glenn Schaeffer Award in Fiction. Her work was included in a list of '100 Other Distinguished Stories of 2008' in the Best American Short Stories and thrice as a 'Notable' story in the Best American Non-Required Reading. She was a finalist for the Pushcart Prize. She lives in Santa Barbara, California.
Elisabeth Rodgers is an actress and AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. After graduating from Princeton University, she completed a two-year program at William Esper Studio, where she studied with Maggie Flanigan. Her audiobook narration training came from Robin Miles, who has also directed her in several productions. She has recorded dozens of books for a multitude of publishers.
