Away

Description

Away is the extraordinary story of an accidental hero, young Lillian Leyb. Her family murdered in a Russian pogrom, in which her three-year-old daughter Sophie vanished, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way. In 1920s New York she is taken under the wing of both Reuben and Meyer Burstein, the family Impresario and his matinee-idol son. But then Lillian's cousin Raisele arrives with news of Sophie. Driven by wild hope, Lillian sets off on an odyssey across America, travelling from New York's Lower East Side to Seattle's Skid Row and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail. Away is storytelling at its finest - epic in sweet, intimate and psychologically acute, big hearted, witty and unsentimental.

Amy Bloom is the acclaimed author of three collections of short stories, Where the God of Love Hangs Out (Granta, 2010), Come to Me and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, also published in one volume Rowing to Eden (Granta, 2015) and three novels, Lucky Us (Granta, 2014), Away (Granta, 2007), and Love Invents Us. She is the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing at Wesleyan University.

'A tender, funny and wise novel' Marie Claire 'An urgent, riveting, fabulously entertaining road trip of a novel, Away grabs you by the throat from the first page to the last, breaks your heart and shakes all your senses awake' Emma Donoghue 'Proof that a thoroughly conventional novel can soar so long as the execution is extraordinary' Lionel Shriver, Guardian 'Celebrate mother-love with Amy Bloom's latest novel, Away' Vogue 'Harrowing, intense and deeply moving, this is a story about surviving the worst nightmares that history bequeaths us. I had to keep reading, willing Lillian to win through, and hoping that the strengths of courage, humour and kindness would prevail. Even as my hopes were realised, I was subtly reminded that this is a world where nothing can ever be quite certain or secure' Margaret Elphinstone