Book Description
A glorious, sweeping new novel from the bestselling
author of The Volcano Lover.
The Volcano Lover, Susan Sontag's bestselling 1992 novel,
retold the love story of Lady Emma Hamilton and Lord Nelson
with consummate power. In her enthralling new novel-once
again based on a real story-Sontag shows us our own country
on the cusp of modernity. In 1876 a group of Poles led by
Maryna Zalewska, Poland's greatest actress, travel to
California to found a "utopian" commune. Maryna,
who has renounced her career, is accompanied by her small son
and husband; in her entourage is a rising young writer who is
in love with her. The novel portrays a West that is still
largely empty, where white settlers confront native
Californians and Asian coolies. The image of America, and of
California-as fantasy, as escape, as radical
simplification-constantly meets a more complex reality. The
commune fails and most of the migrs go home, but Maryna stays
and triumphs on the American stage. In America is a big,
juicy, surprising book-about a woman's search for
self-transformation, about the fate of idealism, about the
world of the theater-that will captivate its readers from the
first page. It is Sontag's most delicious, most brilliant
achievement.
