Mary Gordon

press release:

ABOUT THIS BOOK...

At nineteen, Marian Taylor cut herself off from her wealthy, conservative Irish Catholic family and left America to volunteer in the Spanish Civil War—an experience she has always kept to herself. Now in her nineties and diagnosed with cancer, Marian finally shares what happened to her during those years with her granddaughter Amelia, a young woman of good heart but only a vague notion of life’s purpose. Marian’s secret history—of personal and ethical challenges nearly unthinkable to Amelia’s generation, of the unexpected gifts of true love and true friendship—compels Amelia to make her own journey to Spain to reconcile her grandmother’s past with her own uncertain future. Moving and deeply felt, There Your Heart Lies explores how character is forged in a particular moment in history—and passed down through generations.

ABOUT THIS AUTHOR...

Mary Gordon is the author of eight novels, including Final Payments, Pearl, and The Love of My Youth; six works of nonfiction, including the memoirs The Shadow Man and Circling My Mother; and three collections of short fiction, including The Stories of Mary Gordon, which was awarded the Story Prize. She has received many other honors, including a Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Academy Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She teaches at Barnard College and lives in New York City.

REVIEWS...

“Exceptional. . . . Magnetically realized. . . . Gordon illuminates her scenes with kinetic precision.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Radiant. . . . Gordon journeys deep into the hearts and minds of women, still yearning, even at the last.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“Intellectually and emotionally involving. . . . [There Your Heart Lies] translates inexplicable and inexpressible experience into understanding.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“An emotionally and historically rich work with a strong character portrait holding together its disparate parts.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“[An] astute and powerful variation on the Jamesian theme of American innocents abroad. . . . Gordon’s masterful pairing of passionately descriptive, stunningly revelatory action scenes with . . . churning interior monologues conveys with arresting insights and startling immediacy the intersection of brutality and faith.” —Booklist (starred review)