Format: Paperback
Pages: 274
ISBN: 978-1-951971-03-8
Price: $16
Publication Date: October 5, 2021

The Gold Persimmon

Lindsay Merbaum

Clytemnestra is a check-in girl at The Gold Persimmon, a temple-like New York City hotel with gilded furnishings and carefully guarded secrets. Cloistered in her own reality, Cly lives by a strict set of rules until a connection with a troubled hotel guest threatens the world she’s so carefully constructed.

In a parallel reality, an inexplicable fog envelops the city, trapping a young, nonbinary writer named Jaime in a sex hotel with six other people. As the survivors begin to turn on one another, Jaime must navigate a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Haunted by specters of grief and familial shame, Jaime and Cly find themselves trapped in dual narratives in this gripping experimental novel that explores sexuality, surveillance, and the very nature of storytelling.

Praise for The Gold Persimmon

“Part suspenseful romp, part meditation on human connection, The Gold Persimmon is a riveting debut. In twin hotels—one for people seeking escape from grief, one for people seeking escape in sex—Lindsay Merbaum’s captivating characters confront profound questions about identity, loss, fear, and desire.”—Helen Phillips, author of The Need

About the Author

Lindsay Merbaum is a queer feminist author and high priestess of home mixology. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College, she earned her MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College, where she was a recipient of the Himan Brown Award. Her award-nominated short fiction has appeared in PANK, Anomalous Press, The Collagist, Epiphany, Gargoyle, Day One, Harpur Palate, and Hobart, among others. Her essays and interviews can also be found in Electric Literature, Bustle, Bitch Media, The Rumpus, and more. Lindsay lives in Michigan with her partner and cats and serves as an editor of book reviews at Necessary Fiction. The Gold Persimmon is her first novel.