Mad Eden: A Novel by Morgan Thomas

Description

Mad Eden: A Novel
by Morgan Thomas
Hardcover | ISBN: 0374620156

Inventive, emotionally expansive, and fiercely contemporary, Mad Eden is a daring literary novel that blends queer intimacy, political urgency, speculative storytelling, and neurodivergent perception into something wholly original.

Ro and Liam have built a fragile but meaningful life together in a weathered cabin tucked away in rural Florida. Their relationship is imperfect, often strained by emotional turbulence and the pressures of surviving in an increasingly hostile political climate, but for Ro, it still feels like paradise. Newly diagnosed with autism and working as a patient navigator helping people access gender-affirming healthcare, Ro has finally begun to understand themself and the world around them with greater clarity.

Then everything starts to fracture.

Quentin, the teenager Ro and Liam have quietly become surrogate parents to, arrives before leaving for college and preparing to begin testosterone therapy. At the same time, Ro becomes consumed by “Mad Eden,” a sprawling online fantasy serial about dragon riders and heroism that begins bleeding emotionally and psychologically into daily life. Meanwhile, an apparently routine patient video call triggers a chain of consequences that threatens not only Ro’s livelihood but the precarious life they have struggled to create.

As pressure mounts, Ro finds themself pulled between competing obligations: love, survival, morality, identity, and the impossible demand to become heroic in a world designed to punish vulnerability. The novel’s structure itself bends and shifts alongside Ro’s neurodivergent experience, exploring time, memory, language, and perception in startlingly inventive ways.

Morgan Thomas writes with extraordinary emotional precision and imaginative force, crafting a novel that is both deeply intimate and politically resonant. Mad Eden examines trans healthcare, chosen family, autism, online storytelling, queer survival, and the ethics of care without sacrificing warmth, humor, or tenderness.

Form-bending, compassionate, and intellectually fearless, Mad Eden is a powerful meditation on how people create meaning, love, and joy while navigating systems determined to make existence precarious.

Perfect for readers of literary speculative fiction, trans literature, queer contemporary fiction, and emotionally complex novels that challenge narrative conventions, Mad Eden announces Morgan Thomas as a bold and essential new voice.