Famepunk: Part 2: Middlemarch

A multi-volume historical fantasy novel chronicling the romantic life of a Brooklyn-born tennis prodigy, FAMEPUNK is a story of love and competition, lesbians and the closet, children and parents, nature and art, the Cold War and its aftermath, money, globalism, technology, women's bodies in the marketplace and in the home, privacy and secrecy, hypocrisy, perversion, addiction, truth-telling—and tennis. This is a fan's novel, grounded in its author’s love for the sport and its real-life players.

Part 2 reunites the charismatic international cast of US OPEN 1987 for a follow-up year of historic action at the highest levels of the women’s game. As Emma Jasohn, the Grand Slams’ newest superstar, trades in the shopping malls of Long Island for the clay courts of the American South, she finds herself on a collision course with ghosts, curses, Gold Coast retirees, Yugoslavian goblin children, crazed evangelical pastors, witches and soft-core pornographers, bigots and brand names, bad pie and weed shortages, law enforcement, propriety, poisonous wildlife, a bad losing streak and chronically empty pockets. But her backers at the Moscow Talent School face the biggest complication yet, when Emma’s unexpected friendship with German teen head case and Wimbledon champion Vivienne Helm takes a dangerous plunge into passionate romance. Through it all, the irrepressible former unknown remains determined to defend her US Open title—and to finish reading MIDDLEMARCH, George Eliot’s masterpiece…soon.

It’s very long.