Leaving Lucy Pear

Author: Anna Solomon

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $32.99 AUD
  • : 9780349134482
  • : Little, Brown Book Group
  • : Blackfriars
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  • : 0.455
  • : June 2016
  • : 234mm X 153mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : 32.99
  • : August 2016
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  • :
  • : books

Special Fields

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  • : Anna Solomon
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  • : Paperback
  • : 816
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  • :
  • : 813.6
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  • :
  • : 336
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Barcode 9780349134482
9780349134482

Description

One night in 1917 Beatrice Haven creeps out of her uncle's house on Cape Ann, Massachusetts, and leaves her newborn baby at the foot of a pear to tree, and watches as another woman claims the child as her own. The unwed daughter of wealthy Jewish industrialists and a gifted pianist bound for Radcliffe, Bea plans to leave her shameful secret behind and make a fresh start. Ten years later, Prohibition is in full swing, post-WWI America is in the grips of rampant xenophobia, and Bea's hopes for her future remain unfulfilled. She returns to her uncle's house, seeking a refuge from her unhappiness. But she discovers far more when the rum-running manager of the local quarry inadvertently reunites her with Emma Murphy, the headstrong Irish Catholic woman who has been raising her abandoned child-now a bright, bold, cross-dressing girl named Lucy Pear, with secrets of her own. Set against one of America's most turbulent decades, Leaving Lucy Pear delves into questions of class, freedom, and the meaning of family, telling a captivating story.

Reviews

Leaving Lucy Pear is that rare combination of stunning language, raw emotion, and profound wisdom that catches you up and wrings you out and yet somehow leaves you fuller than when you began. In this tender new novel, Anna Solomon looks at our most fundamental relationships - between mothers, children, and lovers - with more compassion and grace than seems humanly possible Celeste Ng, New York Times-bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You In Anna Solomon's marvellously textured new novel, Cape Ann in the late 1920s thrums with the issues of the day. When two seemingly dissimilar women become bound to the same child, we're given a piercing and often profound look at motherhood, what it is and isn't, as well as the ways suffering makes and unmakes us all, sometimes many times over. Solomon is an enormously gifted writer, and her penetrating tale will linger in your mind long after the last page has turned Paula McLain, New York Times-bestselling author of The Paris Wife and Circling the Sun From the first page, I was under the spell of Anna Solomon's emotionally engaging novel about the devastating choices we make and the unexpected consequences they bring. This is a fine literary tapestry woven with beautiful language, complex characters, and a precise probing of human desires and demons Sue Monk Kidd, New York Times-bestselling author of The Invention of Wings Anna Solomon writes with a poet's reverence for language and a novelist's ability to keep us turning the page. Leaving Lucy Pear is a gorgeous and engrossing meditation on motherhood, womanhood, and the sacrifices we make for love J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times-bestselling author of Maine and The Engagements A marvel of a novel, bursting with intelligence, insight, compassion, and truth. Anna Solomon is an extraordinarily gifted storyteller Robin Black, author of Life Drawing

Author description

Anna Solomon is the author of The Little Bride and a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in publications including the New York Times Magazine, One Story, Ploughshares, Slate and MORE. Co-editor with Eleanor Henderson of Labor Day: True Birth Stories by Today's Best Women Writers, Solomon previously worked as a journalist for National Public Radio. She was born and raised in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and two children.