It is rare that a writer of this caliber and sales track becomes available. We have sold over 40k copies of Improvement and this was the lead title at our recent PRH sales conference. We have an announced first printing of Joan's new novel Secrets of Happiness of 50k. I attach it herewith along with some select praise for Improvement. Improvement was THE novel of 2017, a critically acclaimed commercial success by a writer readers love that went on to win the NBCC Award for Fiction as well at the PEN/Faulkner. It was one of those rare publishing success stories we hear of far too rarely these days. We've sold over forty thousand copies to date of a novel that has cemented Joan Silber's place in the firmament of American writers. She can do no wrong, and this remains true with her stunning new novel, Secrets of Happiness. The warmth and humanity that readers found in Improvement is on full display here, in a novel that carries a wider canvass and even richer tapestry of characters. And coupled with our move to PRH distribution, I think the stars are once again aligning in our favor for a major breakout hit. We publish with great fanfare in May 2021. I don't want to give away too much of the novel and its surprising twists and turns. But our story centers around a New York family who must broaden their horizons when they learn their father has another secret family. The interwoven fates of these two households elegantly unfurl to touch many other figures revealing surprise loyalties, love triangles, and the possibility that we are all connected in often mysterious ways. Ethan, a young lawyer in New York, learns that his father has long kept a second family-a Thai wife and two kids living in Queens. In the aftermath of this revelation, Ethan's mother spends a year working abroad, returning much changed, and events introduce her to the other wife. Across town, Ethan's half brothers are caught in their own complicated journeys: one brother's penchant for minor delinquency has escalated, and the other must travel to Bangkok to bail him out, while the bargains their mother has struck about love and money continue to shape their lives. And once Ethan finds himself caught in a love triangle of his own, the interwoven fates of these two households expand to encompass a woman rallying to help an ill brother with an unreliable lover and a filmmaker with a girlhood spent in Nepal. Evoking a generous and humane spirit, and a story that ranges over three continents, Secrets of Happiness elucidates the ways people marshal the resources at hand to forge their own forms of joy.
