My Sunshine Away - Softcover

Walsh, M. O.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425278107 ISBN 13: 9780425278109

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2016

Synopsis

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"A tantalizing mystery and a tender coming-of-age story...Unputdownable."—Oprah.com

In the summer of 1989, a Baton Rouge neighborhood best known for cookouts on sweltering summer afternoons, cauldrons of spicy crawfish, and passionate football fandom is rocked by a violent crime when fifteen-year-old Lindy Simpson—free spirit, track star, and belle of the block—is attacked late one evening near her home.

For such a close-knit community, the suspects are numerous, and the secrets hidden behind each closed door begin to unravel. Even the young teenage boy across the street, our narrator, does not escape suspicion. It is through his eyes, still haunted by heartbreak and guilt many years later, that we begin to piece together the night of Lindy’sattack and its terrible rippling consequences on the once-idyllic community.

Both an enchanting coming-of-age story and a gripping mystery,My Sunshine Away reveals the ways in which our childhoods shape us, and what happens when those childhoods end. Acutely wise and deeply honest, this is an astonishing and page-turning debut about the meaning of family, the power of memory, and our ability to forgive.
 
Named A Book of the Year by NPR, The Dallas Morning News, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist

An Entertainment Weekly 'Must List' Pick 

About this title

Review:

The Amazon Debut Spotlight Selection for February 2015: After only 50 pages My Sunshine Away gave me the same feeling as other Southern novels that have long remained favorites; The Help and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, to name two. How much of our future self is shaped by our first love, our early mistakes, and trading sweet innocence for the acrid recognition of cruelty? A lot, we discover, as we ride shotgun with a narrator who was fourteen the year that a crime against the girl he loved changed him irrevocably. This coming-of-age story set in a quiet Louisiana neighborhood touched by violence is by turns suspenseful and insightful, peppered with moments like this one that I want to commit to memory: “We were all middle-to-upper-class white kids, all the products of our parents’ success, and when we played with one another at school we played in the mirror.” –Seira Wilson

About the Author:

M.O. Walsh’s fiction and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Oxford American, The Southern Review, American Short Fiction, Epoch, and Best New American Voices, among others. He is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Mississippi and is currently the director of the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans, where he lives and works, happily, with his wife and family.

About this edition

• Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0425278107
• ISBN 13: 9780425278109
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352