Bøger af Jennifer Vanderbes

"When the application for a new sedative called Kevadon--commonly known as thalidomide--landed on Frances Kelsey's desk at the FDA in 1960, it seemed destined to sail through the review process. The drug, billed as entirely risk-free, was already being sold in forty-six countries. But when Kelsey learned that the drug caused terrible birth defects, she and a team of dedicated doctors, parents, and journalists fought Merrell, the drug's American manufacturer, and Chemie-Gruenenthal, the German company founded by former Nazis that first synthesized the drug, to recall the product. It marked a rare victory in America's perennial battle between capitalism and consumer protection. Though Kelsey received a presidential medal and a LIFE magazine photo spread of European children missing limbs shocked American readers, an essential chapter laid buried for decades. Jennifer Vanderbes discovered that even though Frances Kelsey refused to approve Merrell's application to "sell" thalidomide in the United States, the drug firm, under the guise of clinical trials, had quietly sent millions of pills to doctors nationwide. Years before that, an additional drug company had asked doctors to test the drug on patients. The toxic sedative that was ostensibly "never sold" in America had, in fact, been distributed for five years, reaching tens of thousands of unwitting patients, including hundreds of pregnant women"--

On Thanksgiving Day 2007, as the country teeters on the brink of a recession, three generations of the Olson family gather. Eleanor and Gavin worry about their daughter, a single academic, and her newly adopted Indian child, and about their son, who has been caught in the imploding real-estate bubble. While the Olsons navigate the tensions and secrets that mark their relationships, seventeen-year-old Kijo Jackson and his best friend Spider set out from the nearby housing projects on a mysterious job. A series of tragic events bring these two worlds ever closer, exposing the dangerously thin line between suburban privilege and urban poverty, and culminating in a crime that will change everyone’s life.   In her gripping new book, Jennifer Vanderbes masterfully lays bare the fraught lives of this complex cast of characters and the lengths to which they will go to protect their families. Strangers at the Feast is at once a heartbreaking portrait of a family struggling to find happiness and an exploration of the hidden costs of the American dream.   Published to international acclaim, Jennifer Vanderbes’s first book, Easter Island, was hailed as “one of those rare novels that appeals equally to heart, mind, and soul,” by the San Francisco Chronicle. In her second novel, this powerful writer reaches new heights of storytelling. This page-turner wrestles with the most important issues of our time—race, class, and above all else, family. Strangers at the Feast will leave readers haunted and deeply affected.

Påskeøya, 1913. Elsa Pendelton ankommer øya sammen med ektemannen, antropologen Edward Pendelton, som er sendt for å studere de berømte statuene, og søstra Alice. Elsa begynner si egen utforsking av øya. Siden de er isolert fra omverdenen, veit hun ikke at første verdenskrig er brutt ut, og at en tysk skvadron på flukt fra britene er på veg mot Påskeøya. Seksti år seinere reiser botanikeren Greer Farraday til Påskeøya for å forske på øyas flora. En serie hendelser fører til at historiene til to kvinner møtes.

On Christmas day in 1956, a woman gave birth to a baby girl without ears. She was the first living victim of the notorious Thalidomide epidemic, of which there would go on to be over 10,000 more in forty-six countries across the world.

Full of suspense and revelation, EASTER ISLAND is an exceptional, supremely satisfying novel, marking the debut of a brilliant new writer and storyteller.