Away : A Novel

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Life is no party for Lillian Leyb, the 22-year-old Jewish immigrant protagonist of Bloom's outstanding fifth novel: her husband and parents were killed in a Russian pogrom, and the same violent episode separated her from her three-year-old daughter, Sophie. Arriving in New York in 1924, Lillian dreams of Sophie, and after five weeks in America, barely speaking English, she outmaneuvers a line of applicants for a seamstress job at the Goldfadn Yiddish Theatre, where she becomes the mistress of both handsome lead actor Meyer Burstein and his very connected father, Reuben. Her only friend in New York, tailor/actor/playwright Yaakov Shimmelman, gives her a thesaurus and coaches her on American culture. In a last, loving, gesture, Yaakov secures Lillian passage out of New York to begin her quest to find Sophie. The journey—through Chicago by train, into Seattle's African-American underworld and across the Alaskan wilderness—elevates Bloom's novel from familiar immigrant chronicle to sweeping saga of endurance and rebirth. Encompassing prison, prostitution and poetry, Yiddish humor and Yukon settings, Bloom's tale offers linguistic twists, startling imagery, sharp wit and a compelling vision of the past. Bloom has created an extraordinary range of characters, settings and emotions. Absolutely stunning. (Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Bookmarks Magazine Inspired by the legend of Lillian Alling, a Russian immigrant who decided to walk home to Siberia in the 1920s, Amy Bloom has taken the few details known to history and fleshed them out into a brilliant, enthralling novel. Critics universally lauded Bloom's lovely prose, wit, incisive characterizations, and keen grasp of the complexities of the human heart. Her careful balance of tragedy and humor, and irony and compassion, sidesteps sentimentality, and the novel retains a Dickensian flair without ever becoming maudlin. (Only USA Today faulted its epic-like narrative.) Critics also praised Bloom's narrative trick of revealing her characters' futures as they leave the plot. Hailed as a "literary triumph" by the New York Times , "it is also a classic page-turner, one that delivers a relentlessly good read." Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. Family Life,Historical,Fiction,CFC

Moll Flanders in America, this epic, intimate novel follows a young Russian immigrant determined to make her way—and find her daughter—in the hip, harsh 1920s.

On a morning in 1924, a young woman rises from the floor of her family's small home in Belorussia to find her parents and her husband slaughtered beside her and her infant daughter, Sophie, missing. When her aunt tells her the baby is dead, Lillian emigrates to America. She is working as a seamstress at the Yiddish Theater and enjoying café society when a cousin arrives and insists that her daughter is still alive—in Siberia.

Lillian cannot stop dreaming of Sophie; she feels she must get to Russia, yet she can't afford the passage. Her only friend, an actor turned tailor, steals atlases from the New York Public Library and sews them into an overcoat for her. She crosses North America by rail, truck, and foot, encountering drifters, wardens, pimps, missionaries, and tattoo artists. From Dawson City, Alaska, she sets sail for Russia. She falls in love, falls in with the wrong people, leaps before she looks, hopes hard, and refuses to give up.

Inspired by a true story, Away is Moll Flanders in America and Odysseus in the Jazz Age: big, wide, brilliantly imagined, unexpectedly funny, and unforgettable.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

Away is a modest name for a book as gloriously transporting as Amy Bloom's new novel. Alive with incident and unforgettable characters, it sparkles and illuminates as brilliantly as it entertains. The accomplishment is even more remarkable given the seeming drabness of the story Ms. Bloom tells. She offers a ridiculously beautiful account of a 1926 transcontinental schlep by an immigrant Jewish seamstress from New York toward Siberia in search of her young daughter…To the extent that a work of fiction can be all things to all people, this one is remarkably versatile. Away is a literary triumph, a book-club must and a popular novel destined for wide readership. It is accessible to the point of pure enthrallment without compromising its eloquence or thematic strength. Yet it is also a classic page-turner, one that delivers a relentlessly good read.

Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York's Lower East Side, to Seattle's Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. All of the qualities readers love in Amy Bloom's work--her humor and wit, her elegant and irreverent language, her unflinching understanding of passion and the human heart--come together in the embrace of this brilliant novel, which is at once heartbreaking, romantic, and completely unforgettable.From the Hardcover edition. Lillian will endure almost anything because nothing can be worse than what she has already survived? a pogrom in which her family was butchered:She was an orphan, a widow and the mother of a dead child, for which theres not even a special word, its such a terrible thing.? Lillians grim plight and past are never far from the narrative of Amy Blooms new novel. Every night, Lillian dreams of the bloody bodies of her parents and husband, and of the chicken coop where shed ordered her daughter, Sophie, to hide. But Lillian persists. Az me muz, ken men.? When one must, one can July 3, 1924 And Lost There, a Golden Feather in a Foreign, Foreign Land Apples and Pears The Song of Love I've Lost My Youth, Like a Gambler with Bad Cards If I Had Chains, I Would Pull You to Me Orphan Road September 3, 1925 Ain't It Fierce to Be So Beautiful, Beautiful? What Folks Are Made Of October 5, 1925 Hard Times, Hard Times O Beautiful City Bread of the World May 19, 1926 I Hope We'll Meet on Canaan's Shore Our Brief Life Author's Note Acknowledgments A Reader's Guide Her family destroyed in Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way. She is taken under the wing of Mr Reuben Burstein, the famous Impresario and his son Meyer. Her cousin Raisele arrives with unexpected news about Lillian's daughter. Driven by a wild hope, she sets off on an odyssey across America. Arriving in America alone after her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian Leyb receives word that her daughter Sophie might still be alive and embarks on a risky odyssey that takes her from New York's Lower East Side through Chicago, Seattle, the Yukon, and Alaska, to Siberia to find the missing girl