A Beautiful Land (2021, Boyle&Dalton)
A Beautiful Land is the story of Raissa, the middle daughter of three, who watches her family flee their violence-torn homeland, but stays behind, bound by sweet and sorrowful memories.
In time, Raissa struggles toward a mysterious forest where she imagines solace through the unexpected allure of a child.
A Beautiful Land intertwines voices that speak in turn as they parse tangled stories of the place that once was home.
Every genocide is unique, and yet the suffering and endurance of the survivors of each such outbreak of madness transcends both time and place. In A Beautiful Land, Susan Miller has rendered with exquisite compassion the struggles of those who have been exiled from their homes by the unspeakable violence of their former neighbors. Detail by detail, she follows their journeys as they attempt to carry on, to continue breathing, to continue loving, to comprehend what they have been through, to find a new home and perhaps even return to the old one. These characters and their stories are unforgettable.
—Eileen Pollack, author of The Professor of Immortality and Breaking and Entering