The Tulip Poplars

The Tulip Poplars is an epic and lush story of forbidden love set in the early 1900s and across decades, for fans of Tom Crewe and Heated Rivalry. Amos and Tom fall in love while working in the tobacco fields during the hot summers of the early 1900s, but it will be decades before they can truly be together. Tom cannot shake the strict religious code he was raised by nor the responsibilities of his family’s farm, and he ultimately marries his longtime friend Maeve; while Amos goes to New York City to find the anonymity required to live his life openly. And though Maeve pines for Paschal rather than Tom, the strict Jim Crow laws prevent her and Paschal from being together. The Tulip Poplars is a sweeping novel--intimate in its storytelling and epic in its scope--spanning most of the 20th century, centering on four people trying to find happiness in a world that demands conventional choices. It is an examination of faith and doubt, race and class, and desire—not just sexual desire, but also the longing to be good when the whole world is telling you are evil for loving who you love. Deeply moving and based on both his ancestors and his own life, as well as the history of the small Kentucky towns he knows so well, House’s new novel will leave you with a bigger heart.