The Same Sky
A Novel
-
-
4.4 • 61 Ratings
-
-
- $13.99
-
- $13.99
Publisher Description
From the acclaimed author of How to Be Lost and Close Your Eyes comes a beautiful and heartrending novel about motherhood, resilience, and faith—a ripped-from-the-headlines story of two families on both sides of the American border.
Alice and her husband, Jake, own a barbecue restaurant in Austin, Texas. Hardworking and popular in their community, they have a loving marriage and thriving business, but Alice still feels that something is missing, lying just beyond reach.
Carla is a strong-willed young girl who’s had to grow up fast, acting as caretaker to her six-year-old brother Junior. Years ago, her mother left the family behind in Honduras to make the arduous, illegal journey to Texas. But when Carla’s grandmother dies and violence in the city escalates, Carla takes fate into her own hands—and with Junior, she joins the thousands of children making their way across Mexico to America, facing great peril for the chance at a better life.
In this elegant novel, the lives of Alice and Carla will intersect in a profound and surprising way. Poignant and arresting, The Same Sky is about finding courage through struggle, hope amid heartache, and summoning the strength—no matter what dangers await—to find the place where you belong.
Praise for The Same Sky
“The Same Sky is the timeliest book you will read this year—a wrenching, honest, painstakingly researched novel that puts a human face to the story of undocumented youth desperately seeking their dreams in America. This one’s going to haunt me for a long time—and it’s going to define the brilliant Amanda Eyre Ward as a leading author of socially conscious fiction.”—Jodi Picoult, author of Leaving Time
“Riveting, heartrending, and beautifully written, The Same Sky pulled me in on the first page and held my attention all the way to its perfect conclusion. I devoured this book.”—Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train
“Ward is deeply sympathetic to her characters, and this affecting novel is sure to provoke conversations about immigration and adoption.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A deeply affecting look at the contrast between middle-class U.S. life and the brutal reality of Central American children so desperate they’ll risk everything.”—People
“Amanda Eyre Ward’s novel of the migrant journey, The Same Sky, is the most important book to come out of Austin this year.”—The Austin Chronicle
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Eyre's wrenching fifth novel is a study in contrasts between a middle-class woman in Texas and a young girl in Honduras. In Austin, Jake and Alice have finally decided to give up on having a baby after 10 years. As Alice struggles to come to terms with the fact that she will never be a mother, Alice throws herself into work at Jake's up-and-coming barbecue joint and tries to funnel her maternal impulses into mentoring a struggling teenager. On the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, 11-year-old Carla lives without a mother (she left for Texas years earlier) in almost unimaginable poverty, where children pick through trash at the dump and sniff glue to stave off hunger. When Carla's grandmother dies, she risks her life to join her mother in Texas. Over the course of Carla's harrowing journey, she walks for miles through deserts and jungles, hitches a ride on a freight train known as "The Beast," and endures pain and loss that makes her long for her simple life back home. The ways in which Alice and Carla's lives intersect are too subtle until the final chapters, which, while poignant and bittersweet, feel rushed. Regardless, Carla's journey is powerfully rendered and will stick with readers long after they close the book.
