Addison Armstrong graduated from Vanderbilt University in 2020 with degrees in Elementary Education and Language and Literacy Studies. She is currently living in Nashville, TN working with students and obtaining her Master's degree in Reading Education. The Light of Luna Park is her debut novel.

INSPIRED BY REAL HISTORY: The Light of Luna Park is inspired by the real history of the medicine behind the "incubator babies" of Coney Island during the 1920s. The author crafted this emotional story around extensive research into the little-known Coney Island attraction that saved almost 7,000 premature babies. This will be a great selling point for publicity and marketing efforts and book clubs.

GROWING HISTORICAL TRADE PAPERBACK MARKET: Trade paperback original historical fiction is a growing genre and market, with highly successful bestsellers such as The Atomic City Girls, Goodnight from London, and The Flight Girls. The Light of Luna Park is a perfect title for Putnam to gain market share in this selling space and format.

AUTHOR WUNDERKIND AND FUTURE REPEATER: Addison Armstrong is only 22 years old and wrote this novel while finishing her senior year at Vanderbilt University. She has all the talent and writing chops of seasoned comparative authors in the genre and a gift for Big Book ideas. We pre-empted this in a two-book deal and hope to build Armstrong into a book-a-year historical fiction Putnam repeater a la Mira's Pam Jenoff.

BOOK CLUB PERFECTION:The Light of Luna Park masterfully explores themes and issues that readers will be itching to discuss: Questions about medicine and attitudes toward "undesirables" in the 1920s, motherhood and what makes one a mother, identity, grief, love, and the moral complexity of doing something legally wrong in order to do something right.