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Love is the only lifeline
Post-WWI England is a nation in upheaval, its foundations shaken by the Great War and the collapse of genteel Edwardian society. The streets are haunted by shell-shocked men, runaways, mutilated veterans, damned poets, and revolutionaries.
Marion has fled Galway for Oxford after her elopement with a violent man ended violently. In the City of Dreaming Spires, where the cobbled streets, barely lit pubs, and underground book presses hum with restless energy, she meets Jamie, a damaged soul like her who is struggling to recover from his experiences at the front. He alone sees her scars. She alone knows his secret name. Their love is wild, anarchic, dangerous, absolute. Everything, it seems, is at stake. When the "talkers" in Marion's head get too loud and the circumstances of her life too dire, she disappears, leaving Jamie bereft and without word. But their love is like gravity—an undeniable force pitted against the dark forces that would keep them apart.
At once an erotic drama, a formally inventive romantic epic, and a historical novel written with an emotional intensity that bears comparison to classics like Wuthering Heights, Patrick Hamilton's Hangover Square, and Madame Bovary, Amanda is a poignant, atmospheric meditation on love, trauma, and redemption. H.S. Cross delivers an unforgettable novel on the infinite varieties of human experience
"Cross tackles such small issues as faith, the Easter Rebellion, and British classism... That Cross' voice—some combination of Edna O'Brien, Muriel Spark, and maybe a pinch of Jane Austen—comes from a contemporary American writer is hard to believe. Mesmerizing, haunting, hopeful." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Cross delivers an intense psychological drama set in the aftermath of WWI, when an English headmaster searches for the woman he fell for when he was at Oxford... It's a nuanced tale of love and loss." —Publishers Weekly
"Sizzling with restrained eroticism, Amanda is about two lovers driven apart by secrets and brought together again by irrepressible need...A scintillating historical novel about the potential revival of a star-crossed love." —Foreword Reviews
This information about Amanda 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.
H. S. Cross was raised in Michigan and lived for many years in New York City. She has taught grades 2-12, and many of her formative experiences involved being semi-lost in the countrysides of England, Ireland, and Scotland. She currently lives in Savannah, Georgia.
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