The Bereaved
A Novel
by Julia Park Tracey
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Pub Date Aug 08 2023 | Archive Date Oct 18 2023
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Description
Based on the author’s research into her grandfather’s past as an adopted child, and the surprising discovery of his family of origin and how he came to be adopted, Julia Park Tracey has created a mesmerizing work of historical fiction illuminating the darkest side of the Orphan Train.
In 1859, women have few rights, even to their own children. When her husband dies and her children become wards of a predator, Martha—bereaved and scared—flees their beloved country home taking the children with her to squalor of New York City. She manages to find them shelter in a tenement packed with other down-on-their-luck families and then endeavors to find work as a seamstress.
But as a naive woman alone, preyed on by male employers, she soon finds herself nearly destitute. Her children are hungry with no coal for their fire. Illness lays them low and Martha begins to lose hope.
The Home for the Friendless, an aid society, offers free food, clothing, and schooling to New York’s street kids. When a cutpurse takes the last of their money, Martha reluctantly places her two boys in the Home, keeping daughter Sarah to help with the baby. Martha takes roommates into her one room, rotating her and Sarah’s bed in shifts with other struggling women.
Finally, faced with prostitution and homelessness herself, Martha takes Sarah and baby Homer to the Home for what she thinks is short-term care. When her quarterly visit to her children is blocked, Martha discovers that the Society has indentured her two eldest out to work in New York and Illinois via the Orphan Train, and has placed her two youngest for permanent adoption in Ohio. Stunned at their loss, Martha begs for her children back, but the Society refuses.
Rather than succumb—the Civil War erupting around her—Martha sets out to reclaim each of them.
Advance Praise
"In The Bereaved, Julia Tracey reopens America’s wounds in prose that is propulsive and resonant. Martha’s struggles are the stuff of classic literature. Theodore Dreiser comes to mind, but so, too, the fine contemporary novels of Jo Baker and Maggie O’Farrell." —Christian Kiefer, author of Phantoms
"Julia Park Tracey’s The Bereaved is a novel that weaves its intimately detailed characters into your soul. At once, heartbreaking, heartwarming, and absolutely beautiful, this is a story that captures the devastation of loss and the power of enduring hope." —Lauren Hough, author of Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing
"What happens when a mother is left with no choices? In The Bereaved, Julia Park Tracey casts a stark light on an era in which hard work and devotion simply aren’t enough for women trapped in poverty. Vivid, haunting, authentic, and utterly gripping, it’s a beautifully written story that will stay with you long after you turn the last page." —Ellen Meister, author of Farewell, Dorothy Parker and Dorothy Parker Drank Here
"This sumptuous, cinematic book is full of heart and concern for women’s plights in this era and gets to the bottom of the Orphan Train tragedy in a way that seems just as compelling and heartless as from the children’s perspective." —Erika Mailman, author of The Witch’s Trinity
"The Bereaved, a beautifully researched novel by journalist/historian Julia Park Tracey, portrays a courageous woman who suffers similar heart-rending losses to the author’s own. Based also on the struggles her third great-grandmother faced in the American Northeast during the Civil War era, Tracey’s story is gritty, truthful, inspiring, and compassionate. Simply unique." — Rebecca Lawton, author of Swimming Grand Canyon and Other Poems (2021) and What I Never Told You: Stories (2022)
"Impeccable, poetic writing. The care, respect, and fierce love for her ancestors is evident throughout The Bereaved." —Eleanor Parker Sapia, A Decent Woman, 2021 International Latino Book Award
"Julia Park Tracey’s work of historical fiction, The Bereaved, is based on the life of her third great-grandmother. Tracey’s meticulous research reveals Martha’s struggles to keep her young family together in such vivid detail that the reader shares her very real fears, her mounting disappointments, and finally, her heart-breaking decisions." —Nancy Herman, author of All We Left Behind: Virginia Reed and the Donner Party
Marketing Plan
2023 Marketing Plan for The Bereaved, Publication Date: Aug 8, 2023
- Tours throughout Fall 23 focused on Indie Bookstores, Historical Societies, and Libraries
- New York City and Beyond Historical Tour: October 4-16, celebrating sites where this 1859 novel took place. To include NYC events at the NYC Marble Arch Church (coordinated with Ephemeral New York) and the NYC Tenement Museum as well as outlying cities such as Buffalo’s Memento Mori Museum, the Newburgh Historical Society and Crawford House Historical Society, and Lockport, NY, as well as Gettysburg, PA, and Baltimore, MD (all with bookstore partners)
- California 20-City Bookstore Tour: August - September, concentrated in the greater San Francisco Bay Area where the author is known, with final leg in Los Angeles
- Publicity and Media Interviews in tour regions, heavily concentrated in San Francisco Bay Area
- Social Media Campaign, targeting bookstagrammers, booktokers, and Facebook users with giveaways on Goodreads and Instagram
- Shelf Talkers available for stores
- Inclusion in CALIBA 2023 Holiday Catalog as featured title
- Featured at CALIBA 2023 Fall Trade Show
- Women’s Magazines features
- Author Excerpts, Essays, and Talks on: The Orphan Train; Women’s Lack of Rights over Children, Property, and Body in 1859; Seamstress as a Historical Pseudonym for Prostitute, Family History recreated as Historical Fiction.
- Book Club Outreach; reading group discussion questions printed in book
- Library Market outreach, ad in Library Journal
- Trade Reviews pursued in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Shelf Awareness
- Galleys Available for sales force, major media, regional media, social media influencers, influential authors, booksellers and librarians; digital galleys also available for download through Edelweiss and NetGalley
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781736795422 |
| PRICE | $18.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 274 |
Available on NetGalley
Average rating from 40 members
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General Fiction (Adult), Historical Fiction
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