Three Junes

Three Junes is the first novel by Julia Glass, a story of a Scottish family told in three parts, each set in a different June across a decade. In 1989, Paul McLeod, a newspaper publisher who has recently lost his wife, takes a tour of Greece, where he is drawn to a young American artist and thinks back over the truths of his long marriage. Six years later, Paul's death brings his three grown sons home to the family house in Scotland. The eldest, Fenno, a reserved gay man who sells books in Greenwich Village, narrates this section, as the reunion stirs up secrets. In the final part, a chance meeting on Long Island brings Fenno together with Fern Olitsky, the artist who caught his father's eye, as she faces choices about her own future. Warm and wry, the novel explores love, grief and what makes a family. It won the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction.