Leaving the World

#1 International Bestseller

"In this surging epic, a veritable decathlon of the spirit, Kennedy incisively dramatizes the enigma of chance, petty cruelty, and catastrophic evil, 'unalloyed grief, ' and the tensile strength concealed beneath our obvious vulnerability." --Booklist (starred review)

On the night of her thirteenth birthday, Jane Howard made a vow to her warring parents: she would never get married, and she would never have children.

But life, as Jane comes to discover, is a profoundly random business. Many years and many lives later, she is a professor in Boston, in love with a brilliant, erratic man named Theo. And then Jane becomes pregnant. Motherhood turns out to be a great welcome surprise--but when a devastating turn of events tears her existence apart she has no choice but to flee all she knows and leave the world.

Just when she has renounced life itself, the disappearance of a young girl pulls her back from the edge and into an obsessive search for some sort of personal redemption. Convinced that she knows more about the case than the police do, she is forced to make a decision--stay hidden or bring to light a shattering truth.

Leaving the World is a riveting portrait of a brilliant woman that reflects the way we live now, of the many routes we follow in the course of a single life, and of the arbitrary nature of destiny. A critically acclaimed international bestseller, it is also a compulsive read and one that speaks volumes about the dilemmas we face in trying to navigate our way through all that fate throws in our path.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 06/15/2010
ISBN: 9781439180785
Pages: 512
Weight: 1.17lbs
Size: 8.96h x 6.44w x 1.23d

Review Citations: Library Journal Prepub Alert 02/01/2010 pg. 49
Publishers Weekly 04/12/2010 pg. 30
Booklist 05/01/2010 pg. 32
BookPage 07/01/2010