Digging to America

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the beloved, Pulitzer Prize-winning author comes "an intimate picture of middle-class family life" (The New 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.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 08/28/2007
ISBN: 9780345492340
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.51lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.20w x 0.65d

Review Citations: New York Times Book Review 10/07/2007 pg. 40
Christianity Today 09/01/2012 pg. 82

Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 107849 / Digging to America: A Novel
Reading Level: 5.8 / Interest Level: Upper Grade / Point Value: 13