The Loss of Leon Meed

(Paperback)

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Josh Emmons is the real deal: a major league prose writer who has fun in every sentence; you want to keep reading him for the pure pleasure of his company Jonathan Franzen
Over the course of one December, ten residents of Eureka, California, are brought together by a mysterious man, Leon Meed, who repeatedly and inexplicably appears in the ocean, at a local music club, clinging to the roof of a barrelling truck, standing in the middle of Main Streets oncoming traffic and then, as if by magic, disappears.

Each witness to these bewildering events young and old, married and single, punk and evangelical, black, white and Korean interprets them differently, yet all of their lives are irrevocably changed. Over time, these ten characters, previously only tenuously connected, form a strange community of shared experience.

Highly original and brilliantly written, Josh Emmonss award-winning debut is a mystery, a love story and something else entirely.

Reviews

Heres how you know Josh Emmons is the real deal: hes created a full spectrum of Californian characters who are ludicrous and ill-behaved and lovable in equal measure; hes a major-league prose writer who has fun in every sentence without ever showing off or hitting a phony note; and you want to keep reading him for the pure pleasure of his company Jonathan Franzen

Emmons writes with crisp, gratifying authority. The Loss of Leon Meed has considerable appeal and succeeds in finding comic potential in unlikely places New York Times

Emmons cycles through and illuminates the plights of his diverse, crowded cast including a recovering alcoholic, an overweight therapist and a Korean hippie with a finesse that approaches that of a seasoned literary ventriloquist. The characters stories take on a cumulative, mesmerizing rhythm New York Times Book Review

An audaciously ambitious first novel The Loss of Leon Meed is a canny status report on the American soul engaging, enigmatic Los Angeles Times

A mystical ensemble fable about chance and fate and the importance of not giving up Emmons has sizable talent [and] a real shape-shifter's gift for imagining his way into lives different from, and especially older than, his own Theres wonderful stuff here, little stylistic pleats, serifs and tailfins that root in the mind and just won't budge. Its central enigma rewards speculation San Francisco Chronicle

As remarkable and moving a portrait of America as I have seen in some time Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story

Author Bio

Born in 1973, Josh Emmons was raised in Northern California and received an MFA and teaching fellowship from the University of Iowa. His debut novel The Loss of Leon Meed won the James Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award in 2005. He currently lives in Los Angeles.