Read by Ariel Blake

"Ariel Blake soothingly narrates this desolate tale of Marie and Lawrence as they come together and navigate an abrupt new marriage, loss of their first child, and homesteading in the rugged Alaskan wilderness during the 1950s."- AudioFile From NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION 5 UNDER 35 HONOREE and FLANNERY O'CONNOR AWARD WINNER Melinda Moustakis, a debut novel set in Alaska, about the turbulent marriage of two unlikely homesteaders "So good, so precise, so strong, and so deeply felt." -Jess Walter, #1 New York Times bestselling author "Recommended for fans of Kristin Hannah's The Great Alone." -Booklist (starred review) Anchorage, 1956. When Marie and Lawrence first lock eyes at the Moose Lodge, they are immediately drawn together. But when they decide to marry, days later, they are more in love with the promise of homesteading than anything. For Lawrence, his parcel of 150 acres is an opportunity to finally belong in a world that has never delivered on its promise. For Marie, the land is an escape from the empty future she sees spinning out before her, and a risky bet is better than none at all. But over the next few years, as they work the land in an attempt to secure a deed to their homestead, they must face everything they don't know about each other. As the Territory of Alaska moves toward statehood and inexorable change, can Marie and Lawrence create something new, or will they break apart trying? Immersive and wild-hearted, joyfully alive to both the intimate and the elemental, Homestead is an unflinching portrait of a new state and of the hard-fought, hard-bitten work of making a family. A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books. Melinda Moustakis was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, and grew up in California. Her story collection, Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories, won the Flannery O'Connor Award, the Maurice Prize, and was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 selection. Her work has appeared in American Short Fiction, Alaska Quarterly Review, Granta, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere, and has been awarded an O. Henry Prize. She is the recipient of the Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, the NEA Literature Fellowship, the Kenyon Review Fellowship, and the Rona Jaffe Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. Homestead is her debut novel. "Inspired by Moustakis' own family history and set during the Alaskan Territory's bid for statehood, this stunning debut novel considers what it truly means to own land. Recommended for fans of Kristin Hannah's The Great Alone." -Booklist (starred review) "Moustakis shines in her debut…The wondrous descriptions of the back-breaking labor involved in clearing and farming the land, and of the region's vast beauty, will make readers feel like they're there. This evocative, well-drawn account of Alaska's American settlers is so convincing it ought to come with a pair of mittens." -Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Moustakis's writing is so good, so precise, so strong, and so deeply felt that it immediately creates a sense of time and place, and builds a quiet suspense about Marie and taciturn Lawrence. Homestead manages to be laconic and wry and visceral and primal and almost subversive in its depiction of marriage as a lovely, profound hardship." -Jess Walter, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Cold Millions and Beautiful Ruins "Moustakis is a writer of singular beauty, whether turning her attention to the Alaskan landscape or the intimate landscape of a marriage. Homestead is a luminous consideration of what it means for something or someone to belong to someone else, and of how fraught and tentative the labor of longing and belonging can be." -Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections "I loved this book. The marriage is feral, the child-rearing frost-bitten, the betrayals and redemptions jagged as mountain peaks. In blazing, poetic prose,

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