Golden Delicious

Christopher Boucher

“Strange and dazzling…”—Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

Welcome to Appleseed, Massachusetts, where stories grow in soil, sentences are kept as pets, and pianos change your point of view. Golden Delicious chronicles the narrator’s rich, vivid childhood – driving to the local flea market with his father, causing trouble at school, pedaling through the neighborhood on his Bicycle Built for Two.

But as the local economy sours and the narrator’s family is torn apart. His mother joins a flying militia known as The Mothers; his father takes an all-consuming job; his sister runs away for a better life elsewhere. Who will save Appleseed? Will it be the Memory of Johnny Appleseed? The Mothers? The narrator himself?

Golden Delicious is the eagerly awaited follow-up to Christopher Boucher’s acclaimed debut, How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive. It’s a tour-de-force unlike any other, that takes you to the heart of family, love and memory.

CHRISTOPHER BOUCHER teaches writing and literature at Boston College, and is the managing editor of Post Road Magazine. He is the author of How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive and lives with his wife and two children in Newton, MA.

Praise for How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive

“Strange and dazzling . . . Through all the insanity and dizzying leaps of logic that make up Boucher’s world are a series of absolutely human and recognizable truths.” —Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven

“Boucher’s first novel is one of the most original books you will read this year.” —Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist

“As moving as it is fun, How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive is definitely the next book you should read.” —Adam Levin, author of The Instructions

“Christopher Boucher joins a now-forgotten handbook with Steven Wright’s old joke about mistakenly sticking a car key in a house door and builds a new, exuberant novel-world. Goofiness and grief are in perfect harmony in this impressive, moving debut.” —Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask