Anne Tyler manages to create such believable characters time and time again and in Digging to America she delivers yet again. The two families in the novel are linked forever by the Korean children they have each adopted. They celebrate “Arrival Day” each year with a party together. Through the various parties and with the passage of time Tyler explores the characters’ differences, their varying hopes and dreams, cultural backgrounds, sense of fitting in. A brilliant scenario for putting these different families together and beautifully written.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the beloved, Pulitzer Prize-winning author comes "an intimate picture of middle-class family life" (TheNew York Times) that challenges the notion that home is a fixed place, and celebrates the subtle complexities of life on all sides of the American experience.
Two families meet at the Baltimore airport while waiting for their baby girls to arrive from Korea. The Iranian-American Sami and Ziba Yazdan, with Ziba's elegant and reserved mother, Maryam, in tow, wait quietly while brash and all-American Bitsy and Brad Donaldson, plus extended family, are armed with camcorders and a fleet of balloons proclaiming "It's a girl!" After they decide together to throw an impromptu "arrival party," a tradition is born, and so begins a lifelong friendship between the two families.
As they raise their daughters, the Yazdan and Donaldson families grapple with questions of assimilation and identity. When Bitsy's recently widowed father sets his sights on Maryam, she must confront her own idea of what it means to be other, and of who she is and what she values.
'Out of this everyday material she spins gold: stories so achingly truthful, so achingly funny, so sad and so real that you can only marvel…her trademark blend of observant comedy and tragedy, and her window into the human heart, are gloriously apparent' Elizabeth Buchan, Daily Mail
'Digging to America is another superb novel, warm-hearted and funny' Caroline Moore, Spectator
'A small exquisitely painted canvas. Don’t miss it' Woman & Home
'Warm and optimistic, this story about adoption raises issues of belonging and identity' Bel Mooney, The Times
Author
About Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis in 1941 but grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She graduated at nineteen from Duke University and went on to do graduate work in Russian studies at Columbia University. This is Anne Tyler’s sixteenth novel; her eleventh, Breathing Lessons, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She lives in Baltimore. In 2012 Anne Tyler was the winner of the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence.
