Love, Like Apples

A lyrical, deeply felt story of an artist and the great love that defined his life, set against the electric, delirious backdrop of 1970s New York City and the tumultuous years prior--for readers of Taylor Jenkins Reid and Kristin Hannah.

"A wonder of a book." -Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here

Growing up motherless and under the cruel eye of his alcoholic, emotionally distant father, Tiller Loomis seems destined for a hardscrabble life. In the 1960s, the small Appalachian town of Sawyer, Tennessee offers few opportunities outside of working arduous hours on his family's apple orchard. The one ray of light is his older brother Smith, a compassionate and gentle boy who salvages what might have otherwise been a brutal childhood. Kindness, he teaches Tiller, is a choice.

But when Smith is drafted into the Vietnam War, Tiller's world collapses. Directionless and grief-stricken, he stumbles into a children's puppet show at his church and ultimately finds purpose and joy through the strange, tender art of puppetry. Chasing his dream of puppeteering full time, Tiller lands in the gritty, graffitied, bohemian hothouse of 1977 New York City, where experimental artists and misfit idealists are using puppets to try to reach teens with a message of hope on a PBS show called Imagine Nation. In Imagine Nation's cast, Tiller finds a chosen family of dreamers and creators who will change his life forever, chief among whom is the beautiful Julie DiFrancesca, a fiercely vivacious woman who offers Tiller a chance at a life he never thought possible.

Narratively framed as a present-day documentary production about Imagine Nation, Love, Like Apples takes us from the 1970s into the modern era, tracing how the ripples from one controversial but forgotten TV show and a complicated love affair continue outward over decades, while also exploring the indelible power of radical empathy and the lives of the artists who carry its flame in their hearts.

AN AUDIBLE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FOR FALL AND OCTOBER INDIE NEXT PICK

Author: Jeff Zentner
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 11/03/2026
Pages: 400
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 7.95h x 5.34w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781538773604


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 08/01/2026 pg. 70
Publishers Weekly 09/21/2026
Kirkus Reviews 10/01/2026
Booklist 10/01/2026

About the Author
Jeff Zentner is the author of Colton Gentry's Third Act, The Serpent King, which Kirkus Reviews named one of the best books of the 21st Century, as well as In the Wild Light, and more. Among other honors, he has won the ALA's William C. Morris Award, the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award twice, the Muriel Becker Award, the International Literacy Association Award, been longlisted twice for the Carnegie Medal, and is a two-time Southern Book Prize finalist and a Tennessee Book Award finalist. Before becoming a writer, he was a musician who recorded with Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, and Debbie Harry. He lives in Nashville.