---

A profound, important novel about how love and family are shaped by place, race and class - now in paperback

---

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2017 BAILEYS WOMEN´S PRIZE FOR FICTION

Ginger is in her forties and a recovering alcoholic when she meets and marries Paul. When it becomes clear it´s too late for her to have a baby of her own, she tries to persuade him to consider adoption, but he already has a child from a previous marriage and is ten years older than her, so doesn´t share her longing to be a parent at any cost. As a compromise, they sign up to an organisation that sends poor inner-city kids to stay with country families for a few weeks in the summer, and so one hot July day eleven year old Velveteen Vargas, a Dominican girl from one of Brooklyn´s toughest neighbourhoods, arrives in their lives, and Ginger is instantly besotted.

Bemused by her gentle middle-aged hosts, but deeply intuitive in the way of clever children, Velvet quickly senses the longing behind Ginger´s rapturous attention. While Velvet returns her affection, she finds the intensity of it bewildering. Velvet´s own passions are more excited by the stables nearby, where she discovers she has a natural talent for riding and a deep affinity with the damaged horses cared for there. But when Ginger begins to entertain fantasies of adopting her, things start to get complicated for everyone involved.

This is a heartbreakingly honest and profoundly moving portrait of the nearly unbridgeable gaps between people, and the way we long for fairytale endings despite knowing that they don´t exist.

---

Gaitskill´s work feels more real than real life and reading her leads to a place that feels like a sacred space. Boston Globe

---

Mary Gaitskill is the author of the story collections Bad Behaviour, Because They Wanted To (nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award), and Don´t Cry, and the novels Veronica (nominated for a National Book Award), Two Girls, Fat and Thin and The Mare (longlisted for the Baileys Women´s Prize for Fiction). She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper´s, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories, and the O.Henry Prize Stories.

Mary Gaitskill is the author of the story collections Bad Behavior, Because They Wanted To and Don´t Cry, and the novels Veronica and Two Girls Fat and Thin. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper´s, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories and the O. Henry Prize Stories.

---