Goldenseal, Maria Hummel
Goldenseal, Maria Hummel
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Goldenseal

Author: Maria Hummel

Narrator: Hillary Huber

Unabridged: 7 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/09/2024


Synopsis

Downtown Los Angeles, 1990. Alone in her luxury hotel suite, the reclusive Lacey Crane receives a message: Edith is waiting for her in the lobby. Former best friends, Lacey and Edith haven't spoken to one another in over four decades.

As young adults meeting at summer camp in Maine, and later making their way in the glitzy spotlight of postwar Hollywood, Edith and Lacey share a deep-rooted bond that once saved them from isolation and despair, providing comfort from the public and private traumas that they had each endured and which a newly optimistic world was eager to forget. Told through a continuous, twisting conversation that unfolds over the course of a single evening, in which each woman tells her story and reveals long-hidden secrets, the narratives of Edith and Lacey burn with atmosphere, mystery, resentment, and regret.

Set against the vivid landscapes of Los Angeles and unfolding with the evanescence of a dream or a memory, Goldenseal peels away the layers of an intimate female friendship to reveal a stirring and haunting story about the search for connection and the lingering echoes of lost love.

About Maria Hummel

Maria Hummel is a novelist and poet. Her novel Still Lives was a Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club pick, Book of the Month Club pick, and BBC Culture Best Book of 2018, and has been optioned for television and translated into multiple languages. She is also the author of Lesson in Red; Motherland, a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year; and House and Fire, winner of the APR/Honickman Poetry Prize. She has worked and taught at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Stanford University; and the University of Vermont. She lives in Vermont with her husband and sons.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Will

Falling into friendship, with Edith was also, for Lacey, inextricable, with falling in love with the northern summer. Never had she woken to birdsong, or plunged headfirst into cool water on a blazing day, or listened to the whispers of the oaks as a thunderstorm, swept in. Never had the sun fel......more

Goodreads review by Maddie

This shattered me. This novel is a gift to any woman who has ever lost a friend who continues to live. We all know that a friendship breakup hurts more than losing a lover or boyfriend or husband, and this book is the first time I have felt that truth honored in writing. Goldenseal shows the reader......more

Goodreads review by Brooke

One night. Two (former) best friends. In this short novel, Edith shows up on Lacey’s doorstep. After decades of not speaking to one another, Edith is ready to share what caused her to run at a moment when Lacey’s whole life was turned upside down. You hear both sides of the story and sympathize with......more

2.5 stars An interesting concept, and yet I felt myself waiting for another shoe to drop. Short and as a result rather surface level. I found it difficult to understand the characters with the small snippets on the page. Perhaps more length and thus a deeper dive into this story would have resulting......more