TBR 6: Amity & Sorrow

 

    Our sixth recent arrival today is a much-anticipated debut novel. Due out soon, Amity & Sorrow is by Peggy Riley, an American playwright and writer of prize-winning short fiction who now lives in Kent, and as you'll have seen if you read this post, Peggy's book is one of the launch titles for the new Headline imprint Tinder Press. It is being published simultaneously here in the UK and with Little, Brown in the US, and it looks set to make quite a splash on both sides of the Atlantic.

    "In the wake of a suspicious fire, Amaranth gathers her barely-teenage daughters, Amity and Sorrow, and flees from the rural fundamentalist cult run by her husband. After four days on the run, Amaranth crashes the car, leaving the family stranded at a gas station, innocent and terrified.

    Rescue comes in the unlikely form of a downtrodden farmer who offers sanctuary. But while Amity blossoms in this new world, free from her father's faithful tyranny, Sorrow will do anything to get back home. And Amaranth herself needs to know what happened to her husband's other wives - fifty of them - and other children.

    A novel about God, sex and farming, this is an unforgettable journey into the horrors a true believer can inflict upon his family. It is the gripping story of these remarkable women, the beauty and suffering of their former lives and their heartbreaking, hopeful, doubtful future. It is the darkest novel about love and the Good Life you will ever read."

    Michael Connelly had this to say about the book: "Amity & Sorrow is a startlingly original, intelligent and beautiful first novel that I found riveting from page one. I can only wait with great anticipation for what comes next from Peggy Riley."