Housemates
What does it feel like, standing in the moments that will mark your life?
When Bernie replies to Leah's ad for a new housemate in Philadelphia, the two begin an intense and defiantly uncategorizable friendship based on a mutual belief in their art, and each other. Both aspire to capture the world around them: Leah through her writing; Bernie through her photography.
After Bernie's former photography professor, the renowned yet tarnished Daniel Dunn, dies and leaves her a complicated inheritance, Leah volunteers to accompany Bernie to his home in rural Pennsylvania, turning the jaunt into a road trip with an ambitious mission: to document America through words and photographs.
What ensues is a three-week journey into the heart of the nation, bringing the two into conversation with people from all walks of life, "the absurd dreamers and failures of this wide, wide country", as they try to make sense of the times they are living in. Along the way, Leah and Bernie discover what it means to chase their own thoughts and dreams, and to embrace what they are capable of both romantically and artistically.
Housemates is a warm and insightful coming-of-age story of youth and freedom, and a glorious celebration of queer life - and how art and love might save us all.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR HOUSEMATES
“Eisenberg has a poet’s eye for truth, and her prose is gorgeously precise and empathetic while remaining cleareyed. Emotionally rich and quietly thought-provoking, this is simply a stunning debut.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“My favorite book of the year…A wise, beautiful, and gorgeously gay exploration of America, art, and the rugged, vast country that is love itself.”
—Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of National Book Award finalist All This Could Be Different
“A novel of young queer artists making love, poems, photographs and haunted houses.”
—Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show
“A brilliant book about friendship, found family, and jawns. It’s an ode to our bonds told through exquisite character work that makes the world feel so lived in.”
—Debutiful, “Most Anticipated Debut Books of 2024”
“A debut novel that’s part The Price of Salt and part Just Kids, in which two friends journey across America in pursuit of art and love.” —Electric Literature
“A perfect novel about making art, making a life, and how to do those things at the same time, with other people.”
—Hilary Leichter, author of Terrace Story
“Housemates is the brilliant, queer, abundant, art-drunk, soulful, sexy American road trip novel we’ve needed for so long.”—Stacey D’Erasmo, author of The Complicities
“Ripe and undeniably rich . . . I fell deeply in love with this book, marveling at its lushness and its attention to detail, happy to follow wherever I was led. Emma Copley Eisenberg is a brilliant writer and Housemates is superb.”
—Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things
“Gorgeous . . . Housemates is a novel as full as life itself, about art-making and love and friendship and making a way in the world, complicated, funny, questioning, moral. Bernie and Leah are still with me. I won’t ever forget them.”
—Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Hero of This Book
“Radiant and invigoratingly truthful, Housemates invites us to think about the community and country that are possible when we love.”
—Megha Majumdar, New York Times bestselling author of A Burning
"Like the large format camera her character wields, Eisenberg captures the complexity of both people and places with precision and generosity. And finally a book about Pennsylvania and Philly that looks like the place I know and love!"
—Sara Novic, New York Times bestselling author of True Biz
The third Rainbow GirL
A stunning, complex narrative about the fractured legacy of a decades-old double murder in rural West Virginia-and the writer determined to put the pieces back together.
In the early evening of June 25, 1980 in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, two middle-class outsiders named Vicki Durian, 26, and Nancy Santomero, 19, were murdered in an isolated clearing. They were hitchhiking to a festival known as the Rainbow Gathering but never arrived. For thirteen years, no one was prosecuted for the "Rainbow Murders" though deep suspicion was cast on a succession of local residents in the community, depicted as poor, dangerous, and backward. In 1993, a local farmer was convicted, only to be released when a known serial killer and diagnosed schizophrenic named Joseph Paul Franklin claimed responsibility. As time passed, the truth seemed to slip away, and the investigation itself inflicted its own traumas--turning neighbor against neighbor and confirming the fears of violence outsiders have done to this region for centuries.
In The Third Rainbow Girl, Emma Copley Eisenberg uses the Rainbow Murders case as a starting point for a thought-provoking tale of an Appalachian community bound by the false stories that have been told about it. Weaving in experiences from her own years spent living in Pocahontas County, she follows the threads of this crime through the complex history of Appalachia, revealing how this mysterious murder has loomed over all those affected for generations, shaping their fears, fates, and desires. Beautifully written and brutally honest, The Third Rainbow Girl presents a searing and wide-ranging portrait of America-divided by gender and class, and haunted by its own violence.
SELECTED PRAISE FOR THE THIRD RAINBOW GIRL
New York Times Notable Book of 2020 * New York Times Editor’s Choice * Lambda Literary Award Nominee * Edgar Award Nominee * Oprah Mag Best Books of January * Lit Hub Most Anticipated Books of 2020 * Indie Next List February 2020 * The Millions Most Anticipated Books of 2020 * Apple Books Best Books * Amazon Best Books — Nonfiction & History * Electric Literature Most Anticipated Debuts of 2020 * The Rumpus What to Read in 2020 * Powell’s Staff Pick * The Strand Staff Pick * She Reads Most Anticipated Memoirs of 2020 * BEA Buzz Books Winter 2019/2020 * Library Journal Editor’s Choice Fall 2019
“A haunting and hard-to-characterize book about restless women and the things that await them on the road…Eisenberg dives deep here into the backstories of the victims, investigators and suspects, as well as the cultural "backstory" of Appalachia itself.”
— Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air
“An evocative and elegantly paced examination of the murders that takes a prism-like view of the crime…Not just a masterly examination of a brutal unsolved crime, which leads us through many surprising twists and turns and a final revelation about who the real killer might be. It’s also an unflinching interrogation of what it means to be female in a society marred by misogyny.”
— New York Times Book Review
"The Third Rainbow Girl is a staggering achievement of reportage, memoir, and sociological reckoning. We are better for this brilliant, gorgeous, and deeply humane book."
—Carmen Maria Machado
"I blazed through this book, which is a true crime page-turner, a moving coming-of-age memoir, an ode to Appalachia, and a scintillating investigation into the human psyche's astounding and sometimes chilling instinct for narrative. A beautiful debut that will stay with me for a long time, whose story mesmerizes even as it convinces you to find all mesmerizing stories suspect."
—Melissa Febos
"The Third Rainbow Girl is part of a new wave of books upending true-crime tropes and pushing at the boundaries of the genre. If this is a book about a murder, it is also a book about the history of economic exploitation in Appalachia, the systemic biases of the criminal justice system, and the unreliability of memory.”
— The Nation
“The book is more than just another true crime memoir; Eisenberg has crafted a beautiful and complicated ode to West Virginia. Exquisitely written, this is a powerful commentary on society’s notions of gender, violence, and rural America. Readers of literary nonfiction will devour this title in one sitting.”
– Booklist
“Thoroughly researched and reported…Offers a deep-dive into rural Appalachia, a region of the United States that is little understood, and it digs into questions of how deeply misogyny and bias can run inside a community. It is also an honest and endearing coming-of-age tale. . . The Third Rainbow Girl accomplishes what any good murder mystery should. It shines a spotlight on a nexus of people and a place. . . Uniquely thoughtful and introspective. The insights into human nature are the real gritty, good stuff you get from reading a masterful work of journalism like this one.”
—NPR.org