Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Bestseller Alan Brennert's spellbinding story about a family of dreamers and their lives within the legendary Palisades Amusement Park
Growing up in the 1930s, there is no more magical place than Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey--especially for seven-year-old Antoinette, who horrifies her mother by insisting on the unladylike nickname Toni, and her brother, Jack. Toni helps her parents, Eddie and Adele Stopka, at the stand where they sell homemade French fries amid the roar of the Cyclone roller coaster. There is also the lure of the world's biggest salt-water pool, complete with divers whose astonishing stunts inspire Toni, despite her mother's insistence that girls can't be high divers.
But a family of dreamers doesn't always share the same dreams, and then the world intrudes: There's the Great Depression, and Pearl Harbor, which hits home in ways that will split the family apart; and perils like fire and race riots in the park. Both Eddie and Jack face the dangers of war, while Adele has ambitions of her own--and Toni is determined to take on a very different kind of danger in impossible feats as a high diver. Yet they are all drawn back to each other--and to Palisades Park--until the park closes forever in 1971.
Evocative and moving, with the trademark brilliance at transforming historical events into irresistible fiction that made Alan Brennert's Moloka'i and Honolulu into reading group favorites, Palisades Park takes us back to a time when life seemed simpler--except, of course, it wasn't.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [417]-421).
Sharing a family life in the 1930s near the legendary Palisades Amusement Park, a family of dreamers explores ambitions and cultural boundaries that are challenged by the realities of the Great Depression, multiple wars, and the park's eventual closing in 1971.
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
Brennert (Honolulu) presents a story rich with quotidian detail of a midcentury, middle-class American family and tries to answer the question: Were the good old days so good? In 1930, Eddie Stopka begins work at the New Jersey's Palisades Park amusement park selling fairy floss, aka cotton candy. He meets Adele, who's working at a nearby concession. Soon they marry and begin a family. Antoinette, a proverbial tomboy, wants to be a high diver though her mother is opposed. Jack, the more sensitive child, wants to be a cartoonist. World War II changes their family dynamic; Eddie enlists, upsetting Adele, who runs off with a magician after the war. Race issues cloud the postwar park. Toni strikes out to make it as a high diver. The Korean War affects Jack, who suffers from PTSD and can no longer draw. Actor Mark McCarthy, a resident of New Jersey, brings his local ear to the accents in this nostalgic tale. Verdict Recommended for Brennert fans and lovers of historic fiction.-David Faucheux, Louisiana Audio Information & Reading Svc., Lafayette (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
Brennert (Moloka'i) grew up in the shadow of this New Jersey amusement park and wrote the book as a love letter to Palisades-and to a bygone age. Opening in 1922, when young Eddie Stopka visits the park, and closing in 1974, with Eddie's daughter witness to its demolition, the novel traces the ups and downs of this classic park during its heyday-and of the Stopkas' similarly variable fortunes. When Eddie's home life falls apart, he returns to Palisades determined to recapture the sense of wonder he felt there as a young boy and soon marries fellow concessionaire Adele, a former child actress who still dreams of the stage. Various challenges-fire, war, protests, and infidelities-shape not only the Stopkas but also the park. The couple's daughter, Toni, demonstrates the best qualities of her flawed parents in her dedication to becoming a high diver rather than simply relying on her looks. Brennert convincingly incorporates into the narrative authentic figures and anecdotes about the park, and creates a real emotional pull in his evocative descriptions of the eccentric, hardworking people who made up the Palisades family in good times and in bad. Announced first printing of 100,000. Agent: Molly Friedrich, the Friedrich Agency. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
When Eddie Stopka first visits New Jersey's Palisades amusement park with his family in 1922, he is so charmed he knows he is destined to come back. When he does return, it is to become a french-fry vendor, marking the beginning of nearly half a century of work at the park. Eddie marries Adele, also a park vendor, and shortly after their children, Toni and Jack, are born, Eddie joins the navy to help resurrect Pearl Harbor. In 1949, when the park comes under the scrutiny of civil-rights activists protesting the whites-only pool policy, Toni, who has become a first-rate lifeguard, boldly joins the fray. She then follows her dream to become one of few female high divers in the nation. Brennert effectively captures twentieth-century American history from the unique perspective of the park and the lives of those who work there. But if at times Brennert's narrative seems to only lightly skim the surface of history, then Stopka's old-time integrity and lovable gullibility are rewarding depictions of the more cheerful, hopeful American of old.--Grant, Sarah Copyright 2010 Booklist
Kirkus Book Review
A literate, thoughtful saga covering half a century in the life of a family whose world centers on a New Jersey amusement park. As Brennert (Molokai, 2003, etc.) opens his tale, with its plentiful shaggy-dog moments, we find something approaching Eddie Stopka's idea of paradise: a swimming pool "packed with hundreds of swimmers, the beach overrun by sunbathers and toddlers wielding toy shovels." A few pages and years later, and Eddie's world has been transformed: The Great Depression has wiped happiness from the land, and he's taken to riding the rails--though, careful as ever, isn't actually as broke as his fellow hobos. Eddie is nothing if not goal-oriented, and he makes his way back to the shore and talks his way onto the crew, promising that he's "torn down Ferris wheels and put 'em back up again." One thing leads to another, and in time, Eddie's a dad--though therein lies a story that's not shaggy in the least. As the years roll by, Eddie and his offspring face a changing world in which--gasp--African-Americans expect to enter the park and--gasp--Richard Nixon takes national office. For all its exotic setting, Brennert's tale is a universal one, pointing to the travails of family life. But there are differences between the lives of his characters and ours: As one stunt diver says, smiling, of a particularly stunning feat, "Ah, that's nothing. Wait'll you see me do it when I'm on fire." A pleasure to read, especially for those who collect giant pineapples, roller coasters and other roadside attractions.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.