Random Acts of Heroic Love
A Novel
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4.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
With over 200,000 copies sold in the UK, a Richard & Judy pick, rights sold in 19 countries, called "riveting" and "mesmerizing," this is a cinematic debut from a gifted new writer. Based on real family events, Danny Scheinmann's novel paints a dramatic portrait of two epic love stories.
1992: Traveling through South America with his girlfriend, Leo wakes up in a hospital to find his girlfriend is dead. He blames himself for the tragedy and is sucked into a spiral of despair. But a surprising secret leads Leo to discover something that will change his life forever.
1917: Moritz is a POW fugitve, with seven thousand kilometers of the Russian steppes separating him from his first love, whose memory has kept him alive through carnage and captivity. The war may be over, but he now faces a perilous journey and the insecurity of whether his love is still waiting.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Young Leo Deakin wakes in a hospital in Ecuador in 1992 to discover that his girlfriend, Eleni, has died in a bus crash. Overwhelmed with guilt and grief, Leo returns to life seeking the meaning behind his new predicament: left behind, haunted by his dead lover and ambivalent over whether he should shake her hold on him. In an effort to break through his son's grief, Leo's dad imparts the tale of Leo's grandfather Moritz Daniecki, who as a WWI POW escaped across the Siberian wasteland to make it back to the woman he loved. The parallel powers of love and grief form the meeting points of these mirror sagas, which Scheinmann combines to remarkable effect. Leo and Moritz are tender, deeply feeling, put-upon characters who never descend into mawkishness; indeed, readers will feel most for Leo when he's at his worst. Dotted with strange scientific trivia, this beautiful debut novel provides deft moments of poignancy and surprise.
