The Dime Museum, a novel in stories, is “A vibrant, terrific novel.”—Joan Silber
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Mark your calendars, LitStackers! The Dime Museum by Joyce Hinnefeld is in presale (the best time to buy a book), and ready to hit the bookshelves on August 12, 2025. Our anticipation is palpable. Published by Unbridled Books, The Dime Museum is already making waves with early readers. Here’s a sneak peek at what’s on the cover, from the publisher’s official description to early reviews, that will help you pre-order your copy ASAP. Let’s dive in!
In This Spotlight On The Dime Museum
About The Dime Museum
Hinnefeld’s web of characters are bound by legacies, genes, philanthropy, and chance but gravitate largely around Charlie, a rich, white, college graduate who ends up in Venice. He’s struggling to understand how his significant privilege has destroyed a romantic relationship, but he draws unwanted interest from other quarters with his interest in the writing of Ezra Pound. His Dreamer ex-girlfriend, Min, becomes a nurse and is overwhelmed by caregiving and loss, including the untimely death of a Vietnam veteran who works as a gardener for Charlie’s mother.
In this novel that spans generations, though, it is Charlie’s great-great grandmother, who cherished a forbidden love for a Vaudevillian male impersonator, that defines his life. She is the source of his wealth but also mother to his lonely great-aunt, who in the end controls how he’s raised.
Hinnefeld writes about harsh realities, the importance of connection, and tender hearts in a fragile world. Yet she also writes of the hope and healing found in planting gardens, in poetry and art, and in families forged from abiding love and respect rather than bound only by blood.
The overall arc of The Dime Museum is spurred by a romantic Vaudevillian male impersonator in Chicago in the 1920s. The core of The Dime Museum is built around two love stories: One between that gentle male impersonator and her female stage partner, the other between a young bookseller/poet in contemporary Venice and his Latina Dreamer girlfriend in Philadelphia. A third love story, between the poet’s mother and her second husband, a medical doctor in contemporary Lisbon, ties the generations together. Together, the stories become a novel by moving through Venice, Philadelphia, Chicago, Lisbon, and Prague.
The Dime Museum stories touch on some contemporary cultural issues: same-sex love, hard-working, Dreamer immigrants, the value of the arts, alcoholism, sexism, step-parenting (the Lisbon story), and political extremism (fascism in contemporary Italy).
Praise for The Dime Museum
“How beautifully knit The Dime Museum is—as soon as I finished it, I went right back to the beginning, to see the full span of it and to put together the wonderful complications of the characters. A vibrant, terrific novel.”—Joan Silber
The Dime Museum “follows a Big Pharma family over the course of several generations, with an emphasis on how social repression and unchecked privilege can both thwart lives. . . . An expert example of a complicated form that will reward even more on subsequent readings.”—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
About Joyce Hinnefeld, Author of The Dime Museum
Joyce Hinnefeld is the author of the short story collections Tell Me Everything (winner of the 1997 Bread Loaf Bakeless Prize in Fiction) and The Beauty of Their Youth (2020), the novels In Hovering Flight (2008) and Stranger Here Below (2010), and of other short stories and essays.
Joyce Hinnefeld is an Emerita Professor of English at Moravian University in Bethlehem, PA, and the founder and director of the Moravian Writers’ Conference.The author is a Program Facilitator with Shining Light, an organization providing re-entry programming for incarcerated people throughout the U.S.
You can connect with Joyce Hinnefeld on her website, on Facebook, and on LinkedIn.
Source: Publisher
Publisher: Unbridled Books
ISBN: 9781609531577
Pub Date: Aug 12, 2025
Titles by Joyce Hinnefeld
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