Epic and Lovely

Epic and Lovely is the swan song of Nina Simone Blaine, the daughter of a long-dead 1950s Vegas crooner and a Texas beauty queen forty years his junior. In the wake of her unexpected divorce, Nina returns to her hometown of Los Angeles to spend her final days with The Friends of the Good Thumb, a support group for patients with A12 Fibrillin Deficiency Syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects children of much-older fathers, causes several physical deformities, and results in death around the age of forty.

Written as a deathbed letter to the UCLA physician who has tracked Nina and the other Good Thumbs throughout their lives, Nina recounts her final days with the group and with Cole, the charismatic, sadistic fellow A12er with whom she has fallen madly in love, who charms and harms her in equal measures. An unlikely alliance with a tech billionaire, the return of her estranged mother, and the birth of the baby she never thought she'd have force Nina to reckon with the triumphs and mistakes of her life and to fight to leave her child in good hands.

Author: Mo Daviau
Publisher: West Virginia University Press
Published: 09/01/2025
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.78lbs
Size: 8.27h x 5.65w x 0.79d
ISBN13: 9781959000624
ISBN10: 1959000624
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | Literary
- Fiction | Disability

About the Author
Mo Daviau is the author of the novel Every Anxious Wave, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. A graduate of Smith College and the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan, Daviau lives in Portland, Oregon, where she works as a bookseller.