Farrar, Straus & Giroux head Jonathan Galassi has acquired U.S. rights to a debut novel that could be one of the bigger books at Frankfurt next week. The author is 31-year-old C.E. Morgan, and the book's working title is All the Living. After a submission September 20 to a selected group of editors, last Monday morning Trident's Ellen Levine had several offers on the table, eventually accepting a considerable six-figure bid from Galassi for two books over rival bids from at least two other publishers. The novel follows a young woman who accompanies her lover in the summer of 1984 to his isolated eastern Kentucky tobacco farm, which he inherits following the violent death of his family.
Galassi, who rarely buys debut novels, likened his experience of reading Morgan's manuscript to that of reading Jonathan Franzen's first novel, The Twenty-Seventh City, or Jeffrey Eugenides's debut, The Virgin Suicides, for the first time.
Morgan, who hails from eastern Kentucky, is a graduate of Berea College and the Harvard Divinity School. She is already at work on the second novel, said to deal with horse racing and race relations. Pub date has been set for January or February 2009. “I can't wait for us to publish the book,” said Galassi.
