Palisades Park
Alan Brennert, 2013
St. Martin's Press
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250038173
Summary
Bestseller Alan Brennert's spellbinding story about a family of dreamers and their lives within the legendary Palisades Amusement Park
Growing up in the 1930s, there is no more magical place than Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey—especially for seven-year-old Antoinette, who horrifies her mother by insisting on the unladylike nickname Toni, and her brother, Jack. Toni helps her parents, Eddie and Adele Stopka, at the stand where they sell homemade French fries amid the roar of the Cyclone roller coaster. There is also the lure of the world’s biggest salt-water pool, complete with divers whose astonishing stunts inspire Toni, despite her mother's insistence that girls can't be high divers.
But a family of dreamers doesn't always share the same dreams, and then the world intrudes: There's the Great Depression, and Pearl Harbor, which hits home in ways that will split the family apart; and perils like fire and race riots in the park. Both Eddie and Jack face the dangers of war, while Adele has ambitions of her own—and Toni is determined to take on a very different kind of danger in impossible feats as a high diver. Yet they are all drawn back to each other—and to Palisades Park—until the park closes forever in 1971.
Evocative and moving, with the trademark brilliance at transforming historical events into irresistible fiction that made Alan Brennert’s Moloka'i and Honolulu into reading group favorites, Palisades Park takes us back to a time when life seemed simpler—except, of course, it wasn't. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1954
• Where—Englewood, New Jersey, USA
• Education—University of California, Los Angeles
• Awards—Nebula Award for Best Short Story; Emmy Award
(for L.A. Law)
• Currently—lives in Southern California
Alan Brennert is a United States television producer and screenwriter who has lived in Southern California since 1973 and completed graduate work in screenwriting at the University of California Los Angeles. His earliest television work was in 1978 when he penned several scripts for Wonder Woman. He was story editor for the NBC series Buck Rogers and wrote seven scripts for that series.
He won an Emmy Award as a producer and writer for L.A. Law in 1991. For science and fantasy readers, he might be best known as a writer for The New Twilight Zone and the revival of The Outer Limits. One of his best regarded episodes was for The New Twilight Zone, an adaptation of his own story Her Pilgrim Soul, which became a play.
Since 2001 he has written episodes of the television series Stargate Atlantis and Star Trek Enterprise (as Michael Bryant).
He also writes books and stories, the majority of which are science fiction or fantasy. His first story was published in 1973 and in 1975 he was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in Science Fiction. He also won a Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1991 and had stories in Gardner Dozois's Year's Best volumes.
His 2003 historical novel, Moloka'i, focuses on life in Honolulu in the early 1900s and the leper colony at Kalaupapa in Hawaii, made famous by Father Damien, Mother Marianne Cope and Lawrence M. Judd, historical people who appear in the novel.
In 2009, Brennert returned to Hawai'i with another historical novel, Honolulu, centering on a Korean picture bride in the early 1900s.
Brennert's 2013 novel, Palisades Park goes stateside, all the way east to the author's home state of New Jersey and its once famous amusement park. The book follows a family from the depression era, through World War II, and up to 1971.
Brennert contributed many acclaimed DC Comics stories for Detective Comics, The Brave and The Bold, Batman: Holy Terror and Secret Origins in the 1980s and 1990s. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/16/2014.)
Book Reviews
Palisades Park is a perfect novel. Alan Brennert does a spectacular job of laying out a family saga from 1922 to 1974... he gracefully conjures up a place and time that is no more.
Newark Star-Ledger
An epic journey through the life of a treasured amusement park, with a cast of characters who experience great wonders and tragedies.
Lancaster Sunday News
Brennert writes his valentine to the New Jersey playground of his youth in Ragtime style, mixing fact and fiction. It’s a memorable trip.
People Magazine
[A] love letter to Palisades—and to a bygone age.... Brennert convincingly incorporates into the narrative authentic figures and anecdotes about the park, and creates a real emotional pull in his evocative descriptions of the eccentric, hardworking people who made up the Palisades family in good times and in bad.
Publishers Weekly
Brennert again writes his specialty—a book that has such a strong sense of place, the location becomes the story's main character.... Verdict: This tightly researched book (the author grew up at the foot of the Palisades) makes for fascinating reading, down to the tiniest authentic detail.... This nostalgic coming-of-age tale of a little girl with big dreams is the perfect read. —Beth Gibbs, Davidson NC
Library Journal
When Eddie Stopka first visits New Jersey’s Palisades amusement park with his family in 1922, he is so charmed he knows he is destined to come back. When he does return, it is to become a french-fry vendor, marking the beginning of nearly half a century of work at the park.... [R]ewarding depictions of the more cheerful, hopeful American of old. —Sarah Grant
Booklist
A literate, thoughtful saga covering half a century in the life of a family whose world centers on a New Jersey amusement park.... A pleasure to read, especially for those who collect giant pineapples, roller coasters and other roadside attractions.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Was there a place like Palisades Park where you grew up? What did it mean to you?
2. Was Eddie justified in running away from home? Was he justified in refusing all contact with his mother and stepfather? What would you have done?
3. How was the Palisades “family” of workers and concessionaires like a real family, and how was it different?
4. Have you ever had a dream or ambition in life that you never pursued (or did)?
5. Are you a parent? Would you have encouraged or discouraged your daughter from pursuing the dangerous life of a high diver?
6. Can you imagine being a daredevil like Toni? Could you have defied social conventions of the time to live the life she led?
7. Do you think Eddie was right or wrong in enlisting in the Navy? Can you understand Adele’s angry response to it?
8. What was your reaction to Adele’s abandonment of her family?
9. Why did the author include the (true life) role the Mafia played in the history of the park (especially as regards the later civil rights protests)?
10. How does Toni’s stand against the park’s policy about African-Americans fit in with other incidents in her life?
11. Jack’s postwar illness was once called “shell shock” and would today be diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder. How has the treatment of this veteran’s disability changed (or not) since the Korean War?
12. Compare and contrast the dreams and desires of each member of the Stopka family and how they changed over the course of the story.
13. Would the lives of Eddie, Adele, Toni and Jack have been different if not influenced by Palisades Park? How?
(Questions issued by publisher.)