After forty years, John Irving returns to the world of his bestselling classic novel and Academy Award-winning The Cider House Rules, revisiting the orphanage in St. Cloud s, Maine, where Dr Wilbur Larch takes in Esther, a Viennese-born Jew whose life is shaped by anti-Semitism.
Esther Nacht is born in Vienna in 1905. Her father dies on board a ship from Bremerhaven to Portland, Maine, and anti-Semites murder her mother in Portland. In the orphanage at St. Cloud s, it s clear to Dr Larch, the physician and director of the orphanage, that the abandoned child not only knows she s Jewish, but she s familiar with the biblical Queen Esther she was named for. Dr Larch knows it won t be easy to find a Jewish family to adopt Esther; he doubts he ll find any family to adopt her.
When Esther is fourteen, soon to become a ward of the state, Dr. Larch meets the Winslows, a philanthropic family with a history of providing for unadopted orphans. The Winslows aren t Jewish, but they detest anti-Semitism and similar prejudice. Esther s gratitude to the Winslows is unending. As she retraces her steps to her birth city, Esther keeps loving and protecting the Winslows even in Vienna.
The final chapter of this historical novel is set in Jerusalem in 1981, when Esther is seventy-six.
About the Author
John Irving published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, in 1968. He has been nominated for a National Book Award three times-winning once, in 1980, for the novel The World According to Garp. He also received an O. Henry Award, in 1981, for the short story "Interior Space." In 1992, Mr. Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules-a film with seven Academy Award nominations. In 2001, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
For more information about the author, please visit www.john-irving.com
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