Labor Day

Frank has spent 18 years in prison, accused of multiple murders. One day he succeeds in escaping from the infirmary and, in a supermarket, meets Henry, the thirteen-year-old narrator of the story who is going through teenage growing pains. Henry lives with his mother, Adele, who sells vitamins over the phone and has withdrawn from social life after her husband left her years earlier to start a new life with a younger woman. Henry is having to grow up quickly, with a depressed mother who treats him like an adult rather than a child and no man to look up to. Despite the risk involved, Henry and Adele decide to help Frank and welcome him into their home. Frank soon becomes Adele’s lover and a father figure to Henry, as he seeks to free himself from his past. However, the happy state of harmony that the three manage to construct for themselves clashes with the world outside the four walls of their home, where the police are trying to capture the fugitive. Joyce Maynard’s novel is a subtle story about love and the fragility of happiness, which flows delicately from start to finish.  

Un giorno di festa
Joyce Maynard
NNEditore, 2023