Zorrie (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781635575361)

Finalist for the 2021 National Book Award (Fiction)

From prize-winning, acclaimed author Laird Hunt, a poignant novel about a woman searching for her place in the world and finding it in the daily rhythms of life in rural Indiana.

"It was Indiana, it was the dirt she had bloomed up out of, it was who she was, what she felt, how she thought, what she knew."

As a girl, Zorrie Underwood's modest and hardscrabble home county was the only constant in her young life. After losing both her parents, Zorrie moved in with her aunt, whose own death orphaned Zorrie all over again, casting her off into the perilous realities and sublime landscapes of rural, Depression-era Indiana. Drifting west, Zorrie survived on odd jobs, sleeping in barns and under the stars, before finding a position at a radium processing plant. At the end of each day, the girls at her factory glowed from the radioactive material.

But when Indiana calls Zorrie home, she finally finds the love and community that have eluded her in and around the small town of Hillisburg. And yet, even as she tries to build a new life, Zorrie discovers that her trials have only begun.

Spanning an entire lifetime, a life convulsed and transformed by the events of the 20th century, Laird Hunt's extraordinary novel offers a profound and intimate portrait of the dreams that propel one tenacious woman onward and the losses that she cannot outrun. Set against a harsh, gorgeous, quintessentially American landscape, this is a deeply empathetic and poetic novel that belongs on a shelf with the classics of Willa Cather, Marilynne Robinson, and Elizabeth Strout.

Author: Laird Hunt
ISBN-10: 1635575362
ISBN-13: 9781635575361
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Language: English
Published: 02/09/2021
Pages: 176
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 0.80d
Award: National Book Awards - Finalist

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 10/15/2020
Publishers Weekly 11/02/2020
Booklist 11/01/2020 pg. 29
Library Journal 02/01/2021 pg. 80
Shelf Awareness 02/19/2021