Into Thin Air

by Caroline Leavitt

Overview

Hours after giving birth, a young woman flees her baby and her husband and slips into a new life. With rare insight and compassion, Caroline Leavitt shows us the impact of that flight through the eyes of the husband and child left behind.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781941088180
Publisher:	Dzanc Books
Publication date:	08/05/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	220
File size:	524 KB

About the Author

Caroline Leavitt is the award-winning author of eight novels. Her essays and stories have been included in New York magazine, Psychology Today, More, Parenting, Redbook, and Salon. She’s a columnist for the Boston Globe, a book reviewer for People, and a writing instructor at UCLA online.

Editorial Reviews

Was it surprising that young Lee Archer vanished from the hospital just hours after her daughter's birth? At 14, Lee herself felt abandoned: first by her vibrant mother, Claire, who died an agonizing death from cancer, then by her father, Frank, with his withdrawal, his philandering, and his swift remarriage. All that follows--Lee's high school bad-girl act; her fondness for the open highway; her escape from Philadelphia at 17 with Jim Archer, the serious young man who loves her; and her stealthy departure from the Baltimore hospital, leaving pharmacy student Jim to cope with their nameless infant--seems inevitable. "Into Thin Air" sketches this past, and then follows both elements of the Archer household: Lee, on her exile's journey south to Richmond, Atlanta, and Lubbock, then north to Madison, where she begins to set down roots; Jim, through the loneliness of single parenthood, the obsessive pain of desertion, and the slow growth of a new relationship with Lila, a nurse who becomes his wife and Joanna's mother. Leavitt--author of "Meeting Rozzy Halfway" (1982)--skillfully and movingly traces the infinitesimally thin, immeasurably strong bonds connecting parents and children, husbands and wives, occasionally even ex-husbands and ex-wives. Her characters offer hope for atonement, acceptance, and redemption.

Mary Carroll