Coming soon: Jerry Burger's THE SHADOWS OF 1915

Golden Antelope is happy to announce that it will be publishing Jerry Burger's first novel, The Shadows of 1915, this summer.  Burger is best known for his social psychology expertise--his textbook, Personality, has gone through nine editions; his (milder and more ethical) replication of the Milgram Experiment on obedience to authority has also become something of a classic. In Returning Home, he explores the reasons adults return to the places where they grew up. 

In The Shadows of 1915 Burger uses insights gathered from a lifetime of humane and sensitive work, avoiding academic jargon and creating memorably individualized, characters--as real, charming, arrogant, and/or gently poetic as you'd ever want to meet.  What "shadows" their lives in the 1950s of this novel is a set of events now recognized as the "Armenian genocide."  Most of the young men and women in the novel (Arak, Serena, Mihran) were born into an Armenian community in Fresno, California years after the Turkish government brutalized their parents--but some of them seem to bear--and to treasure--the scars of that time and place. 

This is a deeply perceptive book, using its beautifully developed characters  to quietly raise questions about cultural resonance, gender roles, immigration policies, labor rights, religious rites, and even the "me too" movement.