Beyond the Bright Sea
11 hrs. 3 min.
Language
Russian
Author
Laura Spence-Ash
Author
Laura Spence-Ash
Narrator
Maria Orlova
Narrator
Maria Orlova
Description
A delightful, love-filled novel about loss and finding.
When German bombs begin to fall on London in 1940, Millie and Reginald Thompson take a difficult step: they send their eleven-year-old daughter Beatrice overseas for evacuation. In safe America, she will have to live in a strange family until the war ends. Frightened, angry at her parents, lonely and lost, Bea arrives in a country so different from the bleak wartime London. Mr. and Mrs. Gee—and their sons William and Gerald—warmly welcome the English girl, and soon she becomes truly at home in this new, cozy world, becoming part of a happy family. The dark London and eternally tired parents start to seem to Bea like some forgotten dream. When, after the war ends, the girl returns to England, the memory of her American family stays in Bea’s heart forever—and it is these memories that guide her through life.
In this novel, as in Bea’s heart, there is a bit of everything: two such different, yet so dear families that lived through World War II on opposite sides of the Atlantic—sun and fog, sharp joy and lingering pain, forgiveness and understanding, loss and love.
Laura Spencer-Ash’s debut novel received high praise from critics and peers in the field, including Meg Wolitzer, Ann Patchett, Claire Messud, and others.
The book was selected as a GMA Buzz Pick, Indie Next Pick for April 2023, and received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.
The novel “And Then There Was Sea” made it onto Goodreads’ 2023 top list.
Press about the novel:
“Like the story Laura Spencer-Ash tells, its roots run deep into the difficult years of World War II, but it is also a timeless tale of family, closeness, love, and the attachments we form over the course of our lives—of dreams that are born, die, and are reborn again,” — The New York Times
“An astonishing novel with beautiful, very vivid characters—elegiac and at the same time tense. It tells of family, loss, and the complexity of relationships between loved ones,” — Shelf Awareness
When German bombs begin to fall on London in 1940, Millie and Reginald Thompson take a difficult step: they send their eleven-year-old daughter Beatrice overseas for evacuation. In safe America, she will have to live in a strange family until the war ends. Frightened, angry at her parents, lonely and lost, Bea arrives in a country so different from the bleak wartime London. Mr. and Mrs. Gee—and their sons William and Gerald—warmly welcome the English girl, and soon she becomes truly at home in this new, cozy world, becoming part of a happy family. The dark London and eternally tired parents start to seem to Bea like some forgotten dream. When, after the war ends, the girl returns to England, the memory of her American family stays in Bea’s heart forever—and it is these memories that guide her through life.
In this novel, as in Bea’s heart, there is a bit of everything: two such different, yet so dear families that lived through World War II on opposite sides of the Atlantic—sun and fog, sharp joy and lingering pain, forgiveness and understanding, loss and love.
Laura Spencer-Ash’s debut novel received high praise from critics and peers in the field, including Meg Wolitzer, Ann Patchett, Claire Messud, and others.
The book was selected as a GMA Buzz Pick, Indie Next Pick for April 2023, and received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.
The novel “And Then There Was Sea” made it onto Goodreads’ 2023 top list.
Press about the novel:
“Like the story Laura Spencer-Ash tells, its roots run deep into the difficult years of World War II, but it is also a timeless tale of family, closeness, love, and the attachments we form over the course of our lives—of dreams that are born, die, and are reborn again,” — The New York Times
“An astonishing novel with beautiful, very vivid characters—elegiac and at the same time tense. It tells of family, loss, and the complexity of relationships between loved ones,” — Shelf Awareness
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