Away by Amy Bloom

Away by Amy Bloom is a must read book. Go out and get a copy of it right now.

The story is epic in scope. Lillian Leyb has come to 1920's America after surviving the pogrom that destroyed her village in Russia. The sole surviving member of her family, she finds herself working as a seamstress in New York's Yiddish theatre. Out of a desperate need to better her position, she rents half of the bed in a room she shares with several other young women, she becomes the mistress of a theatre owner. This makes it possible for her to move into better living quarters; things start to look up for Lillian.

Then she receives word that her daughter also survived the pogrom and was taken by a neighboring couple to a new Jewish community in Siberia. Lillian asks her employer for the 75 dollars she'll need for passage back to Russia. He refuses. A friend tells her that she can travel west across America then north to the Yukon and get a boat across to Siberia. After he lays out everything for her on a map and gets her a ride on a train to Chicago, Lillian sets out across the country.

The story of how she travels to Alaska with just seven dollars and fifty cents in her pocket makes up the second two thirds of the novel. Lillian does not travel in style and her trip is not for the faint of heart. She starts out sneaking on board the train and riding in a broom closet only to be robbed of everything once she gets to Seattle. There, she befriends a prostitute who uses her as a secretary/maid until they both have enough money saved to leave town. Once in Alaska, Lillian fares no better, going from one disaster to another, driven only by her desire to be reunited with her daughter.

The writing in Away is surprisingly rich in detail for a novel that covers so much ground in under 250 pages. Instead of giving us all of the trip's details, Amy Bloom speeds the story between destinations and focuses her writing on certain key points in Lillian's journey. We spend many pages in Seattle, for instance, then move very quickly to Alaska. This makes it possible to give the reader very richly detailed characterizations of the people Lillian meets. The characters are united in their desire to survive their circumstances, sometimes by unlawful or immoral means.

Away is essentially a road novel so many characters come and go, but one thing I enjoyed that separates this book from other road novels is that the author tells us what happens to the people Lillian meets. We learn what becomes of the Seattle prostitute who saves Lillian's life, information Lillian will never have. This added to my enjoyment of the novel and to the poiniantacy of Lillian's experience. She will sometimes wonder what happened to the people she met along her journey, just like we do in our own lives. It would be nice to know what happened to them all.

I don't want to give away the ending here, though I loved it and really want to talk about it. Just as we know what happens to all of the minor characters in the novel we do find out what happens to both Lillian and Sophie and neither ending disappoints.

I'm giving Away by Amy Bloom five out of five stars. Go to your library immediately and reserve a copy.