Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue Author:James Purdy In England his novels are always bestsellers, yet for the last decade this American literary master has not been published in his own country. — No longer! — Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue displays the same plainspoken power that has dazzled Purdy's devoted audience for decades. The story of a woman's struggle to come to terms with... more » a life seemingly emptied of meaning by her estranged daughter's death, it explores themes that Purdy has long made his own: the mysterious connections between creativity and self destruction; the human alchemy that binds us even as it forces us apart; the paradox of loss that leads ultimately to renewed life and love. Its portraits of two very different women -- a bereaved, bewildered mother and the artistic, passionate, doomed daughter she is still striving to understand -- are sketched in deceptively simple lines that finally, magically depict a complex world filled with characters observed in such utterly particular detail that they achieve a resonant universality that every reader will recognize.« less