The Same Sky
Amanda Eyre Ward, 2015
Random House
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780553390506
Summary
A beautiful and heartrending novel about motherhood, resilience, and faith—a ripped-from-the-headlines story of two families on both sides of the American border.
Alice and her husband, Jake, own a barbecue restaurant in Austin, Texas. Hardworking and popular in their community, they have a loving marriage and thriving business, but Alice still feels that something is missing, lying just beyond reach.
Carla is a strong-willed young girl who’s had to grow up fast, acting as caretaker to her six-year-old brother Junior. Years ago, her mother left the family behind in Honduras to make the arduous, illegal journey to Texas. But when Carla’s grandmother dies and violence in the city escalates, Carla takes fate into her own hands—and with Junior, she joins the thousands of children making their way across Mexico to America, facing great peril for the chance at a better life.
In this elegant novel, the lives of Alice and Carla will intersect in a profound and surprising way. Poignant and arresting, The Same Sky is about finding courage through struggle, hope amid heartache, and summoning the strength—no matter what dangers await—to find the place where you belong. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1972
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Raised—Rye, New York
• Education—B.A., William College; M.F.A., University of Montana
• Currently—lives in Austin, Texas
Amanda Eyre Ward was born in New York City in 1972. Her family moved to Rye, New York when she was four. Amanda attended Kent School in Kent, CT, where she wrote for the Kent News.
Amanda majored in English and American Studies at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She studied fiction writing with Jim Shepard and spent her junior fall in coastal Kenya. She worked part-time at the Williamstown Public Library. After graduation, Amanda taught at Athens College in Greece for a year, and then moved to Missoula, Montana.
Amanda studied fiction writing at the University of Montana with Bill Kittredge, Dierdre McNamer, Debra Earling, and Kevin Canty, receiving her MFA. After traveling to Egypt, she took a job at the University of Montana Mansfield Library, working in Inter Library Loan.
In 1998, Amanda moved to Austin, Texas where she began working on Sleep Toward Heaven. She wrote for the Austin Chronicle and worked for a variety of Internet startups. In 1999, Amanda won third prize in the Austin Chronicle short story contest with her story "Miss Montana’s Wedding Day."
She published Butte as in Beautiful that same year.
In July, 2000, Amanda married the geologist Tip Meckel in Ouray, Colorado.
They spent a summer in New Orleans, Louisiana, where Amanda wrote the short stories "The Beginning of the Wrong Novel" and "Classified."
During that summer, Amanda finished Sleep Toward Heaven, which was published in 2003. That novel won the Violet Crown Book Award and was optioned for film by Sandra Bullock and Fox Searchlight. To promote Sleep Toward Heaven, Amanda, her baby, and her mother Mary-Anne Westley traveled to London and Paris.
Amanda moved to Waterville, Maine, where she wrote in an attic filled with books. Her second novel, How to Be Lost, was published in 2004 and was selected as a Target Bookmarked pick. It has been published in fifteen countries.
After a year in Maine and two years on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Amanda and her family returned to Austin, Texas.
To research her third novel, Forgive Me, Amanda traveled with her sister, Liza Ward Bennigson, to Cape Town, South Africa. Forgive Me was published in 2007.
In 2009, she published her short story collection, Love Stories in This Town.
Close Your Eyes, Amanda's fourth novel, was published in 2011, receiving a four-star review in People Magazine and winning the Elle Lettres Readers' Prize for September. It inspired the Dallas Morning News to write, "With Close Your Eyes, Austin novelist Amanda Eyre Ward puts another jewel in her crown as the reigning doyenne of 'dark secrets' literary fiction."
Close Your Eyes was named in Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2011, and won the Elle Magazine Fiction Book of the Year.
Amanda's fifth novel, The Same Sky, was published in 2015. It was considered one of the most anticipated books for 2015 by BookPeople and named a "Book of the Week" by People Magazine. Dallas Morning News wrote, "Ward has written a novel that brilliantly attaches us to broader perspectives. It is a needed respite from the angry politics surrounding border issues that, instead of dividing us, connects us to our humanity."
Amanda currently writes every morning and spends afternoons with her children. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Surprising and deeply satisfying.... Ward has written a novel that brilliantly attaches us to broader perspectives. It is a needed respite from the angry politics surrounding border issues that, instead of dividing us, connects us to our humanity.
Dallas Morning News
A deeply affecting look at the contrast between middle-class U.S. life and the brutal reality of Central American children so desperate they’ll risk everything.
People
It takes a skilled, compassionate writer to craft an authentic, moving page-turner from a complex social issue like immigration, but Ward nails it.
Good Housekeeping
Poignant and bittersweet.... Eyre’s wrenching fifth novel is a study in contrasts.... Carla’s journey is powerfully rendered and will stick with readers long after they close the book.
Publishers Weekly
The Same Sky is a book that works to understand our community; not just our neighborhoods in Austin, but America as a whole. It’s important reading for anyone who has an opinion on immigration.
BookPeople
Ward writes with great empathy.... Earnest and well-told. Heartstrings will be pulled.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
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