The Green Pear

The Green Pear is the second book in The Harrisburg Trilogy, following The Blue Orchard. From the mid-century glamour of New York to a quiet village on the Italian Riviera, this beautifully written literary novel follows a man who searches for the truth of his own identity in a world of beautiful, broken things. In the late 1950s, Peggy Drexler-Leighton is a well-known face in high fashion. But as the decade turns, she finds herself sidelined by an industry that has little room for maturing women. Following a sudden tragedy, she and her young son, Walker, retreat to their Pennsylvania roots—only to find that 'home' is a place of shifting expectations and difficult truths. Decades later, we follow Walker to Italy, living as an ex-pat on the Riviera, where he finally seeks to define himself to himself, navigating a life of unusual pairings and hard-won independence. His quiet existence is disrupted by the arrival of his cousin, Lydia, whose presence brings more than just a conflicted memory of home. As Walker witnesses the increasing strain on Lydia's marriage—dragged into the personal and professional drama of their lives and those around them—the tension reaches a fever pitch. Private resentments become public tragedies. When the local peace is shattered by a series of shocking media events, the ensuing news coverage turns an intimate family struggle into a spectacle that predicts the onset of global witness that the world-wide internet will soon deliver. Walker is forced into a life-altering reckoning, finally confronting the cost of acceptance and the reality of a planetary view that make it almost impossible to look away.