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Away
Amy Bloom
#UB9132
Hardcover, 240 pages; 2007
$19.16
This sweeping novel opens in July, 1924, as Lillian Leyb, having recently lost her parents, husband, and child in a pogrom in Russia, makes her way to New York and lands a job as a seamstress for a Yiddish theater. The twenty-three-year-old immigrant is determined to make a new life for herself by any means necessary. She becomes mistress to both the handsome lead actor for the company and his well-connected father. Months later, Lillian learns from a cousin that her young daughter, Sophie, may still be alive. Revitalized with hope, she decides to leave her comfortable—if morally ambiguous—life in New York to search for her daughter. She embarks upon a seemingly impossible, solitary trek—by train, boat, and even on foot—across the United States, up through Canada and Alaska, to Siberia, where Sophie was last seen. Along the brutal journey, Lillian becomes involved with a prostitute in Seattle, spends time in a women's prison, and beds down with whomever will take her in. Amy Bloom's gripping tale of love, loss, and survival is rich with memorable, complex characters, especially her fierce-yet-fragile heroine.
(AG)
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