When Madeline Was Young

This novel begins in the 1960s in a small Wisconsin town, when a young boy, Mac, finds out that his beautiful handicapped older sister, Madeline, is in fact his father s first wife. A terrible cycling accident left her brain damaged, with the intellect of a six-year-old. When Aaron remarried he and his second wife then took in Madeline and treated her as one of their own children. Jane Hamilton, with her usual humour and keen observation of human relationships, deftly explores notions of childhood innocence and a breach between two branches of a large family that spans several decades of wars and political upheaval. Praise for Jane Hamilton- 'Jane Hamilton is the chronicler of family relationships; the cartographer of the human heart. In all her books the domestic is turned into the epic lush, easy to read, intense and brimming with dangerous emotions' - Nicci Gerrard, Observer. 'Both delightful and profound. For lovers of writers such as Shields and Tyler, Jane Hamilton is unmissable.' - Daily Mail.