Bestselling East Bay writer Allison Larkin follows up her warmhearted “The People We Keep” with another moving, unputdownable book.
Larkin’s sixth novel, “Home of the American Circus” (Gallery Books, 432 pages, $29.99, May 6, 2025), already named a Book of the Month Club selection and a “Today” show spring favorite, is a tale about rebuilding family connections and making sense of the past.
Larkin, who appears in Pleasanton with authors Renee Swindle and Regina Marler in a “Read It and Eat” lunch event on May 6, says she set out to write a story of homecoming different from that of a down-on-his-luck guy.
“I wanted to focus on a woman who just didn’t have anything together, because I have had so many times in my life where I felt like that,” she says. She imagined a woman who might look like a loser to the outside world “even though she’s been so true to her heart in so many ways.”
In the book, struggling 30-year-old Freya returns home to her small town of Somers, New York, to try to repair relationships with friends, her sister and Aubrey, the now 16-year-old niece she left behind. The women help each other cope while also trying to bring the family’s falling-to-pieces home back to life.
“I wanted a female homecoming story that was very complicated because female relationships are complicated. Female relationships with family, especially when things don’t go right, are very layered,” says Larkin.
Larkin set the tale in her hometown, although she has been away for decades, to utilize the township’s symbolism and reflect on her own life. Somers, about 60 miles north of New York City, she says, “is where Hachaliah Bailey was said to bring the first elephant to the United States in 1804. But it may have been the second elephant, and the first circus elephant.”
While the town has officially been called the “cradle of the American circus,” Larkin says, “We always called it the home of the American circus.” The town hall, featured in the novel, is called the Elephant Hotel, and in front a huge obelisk pedestal with an elephant on top represents the original animal, “Old Bet.”
Larkin says she always felt like a bit of an outsider in her town: “I was a kid who was really interested in nature and animals, and I understood very early on that a captive elephant is a tragic thing. And I felt like nobody else understood that,” she says, noting that she likes to explore characters who feel misunderstood.
Going home again, even symbolically, can bring back painful memories. She says, “I had to sift through a lot to write this book, which is, I think, a good experience overall. You know, people don’t necessarily always poke at their sore spots, and that’s what we do as writers. We poke at the sore spots and eventually they stop feeling so sore.”
As in all of Larkin’s books, the characters in “Home of the American Circus” feel fully alive with quirks and characteristics that cause them trouble, but readers still want to hang out with them for a few hundred pages, if not longer.
Freya often serves as a stand-in for Larkin’s early life. She says, “I had a period of time where I dropped out of college and went to bartending school and then worked as a bartender at a biker bar. And I do look back at myself at that time and think, ‘Where did you get the guts to do those things?’”
Young Aubrey came to Larkin in a real-life image: “I was driving past a Kmart years ago when I saw this girl sitting outside on a bunch of grocery carts pushed together, sucking on a lollipop and wearing a hoodie. I thought not only was she cool, but that it must have been really painful to sit like that. As if she knew she looked cool, but. I just kept thinking oh gosh, her ankles must hurt pressed up against the metal like that.
“Aubrey has more of a sense of self I think than I did at that age. But I also think that we don’t give teenagers enough credit. They have so much intelligence. They have so much that they actually do understand.”
Clearly, Larkin adores her beautifully drawn characters and hopes they’ll find peace. She says, “I get to the point where I love the characters so much that I feel really committed to telling the best story I possibly can for them—they exist like real people to me. I sometimes have moments where I realize I can’t call them. I’m not going to run into them someday at the grocery store, you know? And it’s actually kind of hard because in my mind, they exist so clearly.
“I had a lot of imaginary friends as a kid, and I guess I still do,” she says.
Allison Larkin appears with authors Renee Swindle and Regina Marler at a lunch and conversation presented by Towne Center Books at 11:30 a.m. May 6 at Lucky, 6155 W. Las Positas Blvd., Pleasanton. Tickets are $20-$45 at townecenterbooks.com.
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