THE SAME COUNTRY
by Carole Burns
The Same Country is a powerful and thought-provoking story about family, friendship and the risks we take to unravel the truth.
When three old friends find themselves back in their hometown, their thoughts inevitably turn to the past. Twenty years ago, Joe was shot dead in the bedroom of his white girlfriend, Aggie. It was deemed an accident, but now Cassie – a journalist – is not so sure. As racial tension ignites a string of violence across their New England city, secrets are revealed, questions mount and suspicions grow. Will the answers that they are so desperate to find cause everyone’s world to shatter?
‘Complications of race and class make for a deeply compelling novel’ MARGOT LIVESEY, New York Times best-selling author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy
‘This is subtly compelling story telling, as alert as poetry to the power of the unsaid’ PHILIP GROSS, TS Eliot Prize-winning poet
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‘A novel which somehow manages to be both a page-turner and an issues-driven exposé of twenty-first century society, The Same Country is an important and astonishing book.’ CHARLIE CARROLL, author of The Lip
‘A romance, a detective story, and a coming-of-age novel all at once.’ GENE SEYMOUR, former Kirkus Novel Prize judge
‘The Same Country is an electric, emotionally charged novel: it seethes with its own energy. Pick it up, and you won’t want to put it down.’ PHILIP HOARE, author of Leviathan, and Albert & the Whale​
ISBN (Paperback): 9781915643605
ISBN (Ebook): 9781915643612
Price: £9.99 (Paperback) £4.99 (Ebook)
Pub date: 29th August 2023
Extent: 308 pages
Format: 135x216mm
Rights Held: UK & Commonwealth (excl. Can and Audio)
Carole Burns, a freelance reviewer for the Washington Post, was the winner of Ploughshares’ John C. Zacharis First Book Award in 2015 for her story collection, The Missing Woman. Carole worked as a journalist, including for washingtonpost.com and the New York Times, for some 15 years before moving to the UK, where she is now an Associate Professor in English teaching Creative Writing at the University of Southampton. Her early years as a local journalist in Connecticut were influential in the writing of this novel, as was her perspective as an American ex-pat living in the UK. Her short fiction has been longlisted in the BBC’s National Short Story.