Critics' Opinion:
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Published Jul 2016
336 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
A big, heartrending novel about the entangled lives of two women in 1920s New England, both mothers to the same unforgettable girl.
One night in 1917 Beatrice Haven sneaks out of her uncle's house on Cape Ann, Massachusetts, leaves her newborn baby at the foot of a pear tree, and watches as another woman claims the infant 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 Bea's abandoned child - now a bright, bold, cross-dressing girl named Lucy Pear, with secrets of her own.
In mesmerizing prose, award-winning author Anna Solomon weaves together an unforgettable group of characters as their lives collide on the New England coast. Set against one of America's most turbulent decades, Leaving Lucy Pear delves into questions of class, freedom, and the meaning of family, establishing Anna Solomon as one of our most captivating storytellers.
"Starred Review. [Solomon's] razor-sharp prose scrapes her characters raw as she plants them deeply in the history and turmoil of 1920s New England. A beautifully rendered tale of discovering one's true nature. Highly recommended." - Library Journal
"Starred Review. Penetrating... Slow-movement storytelling: fully-fleshed, compassionate, and satisfying." - Kirkus
"Ambitious and satisfying ... [a] lushly written look at two women's haunting choices." - Publishers Weekly
"Quietly powerful. ... Solomon excels at portraying flawed characters whose passive-aggressiveness overrides their search for love and success. But when the two mothers play tug-of-war for Lucy, readers cannot help but empathize with all involved. [A] moving story." - Booklist
"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
"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
"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
This information about Leaving Lucy Pear was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Willy Somma
Anna Solomon is a graduate of Brown University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop and teaches writing at Barnard College, Warren Wilson's MFA Program in Creative Writing, and the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center.
Solomon is the author of Leaving Lucy Pear and 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. She is coeditor with Eleanor Henderson of Labor Day: True Birth Stories by Today's Best Women Writers; previously, she worked as an award-winning journalist for National Public Radio's Living on Earth.
Anna was born and raised in Gloucester, Massachusetts and lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two children.
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