'Josh Emmons is the real deal: a major league prose writer who has fun in every sentence; you want to keep reading him for the pure pleasure of his company' Jonathan Franzen Over the course of one December, ten residents of Eureka, California, are brought together by a mysterious man, Leon Meed, who repeatedly and inexplicably appears - in the ocean, at a local music club, clinging to the roof of a barrelling truck, standing in the middle of Main Street's oncoming traffic - and then, as if by magic, disappears. Each witness to these bewildering events - young and old, married and single, punk and evangelical, black, white and Korean - interprets them differently, yet all of their lives are irrevocably changed. Over time, these ten characters, previously only tenuously connected, form a strange community of shared experience. Highly original and brilliantly written, Josh Emmons's award-winning debut is a mystery, a love story and something else entirely.
'Here's how you know Josh Emmons is the real deal: he's created a full spectrum of Californian characters who are ludicrous and ill-behaved and lovable in equal measure; he's a major-league prose writer who has fun in every sentence without ever showing off or hitting a phony note; and you want to keep reading him for the pure pleasure of his company' Jonathan Franzen
'Emmons writes with crisp, gratifying authority. The Loss of Leon Meed has considerable appeal ... and succeeds in finding comic potential in unlikely places' New York Times
Author
About Josh Emmons
Born in 1973, Josh Emmons was raised in Northern California and received an MFA and teaching fellowship from the University of Iowa. His debut novel The Loss of Leon Meed won the James Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award in 2005. He currently lives in Los Angeles.
