Publisher's Synopsis
From the prize-winning author Lucia Nevai comes the smart, poignant, and richly imagined novelSalvation, the coming of age story of Crane Cavanaugh.
Born into a family of three former charlatan preachers and two older siblings living in poverty in rural Iowa, Crane is a budding scientist with a rich awareness of the natural world and her own precarious spot in it.
Crane narrates her life from the moment of birth through disfiguration in the womb to well-deserved elevation in the halls of academe. Separated from the sister and brother who tried to protect her in infancy, and assigned by welfare workers to life in a convent, Crane rebels. Her belligerence causes the nuns to put her up for adoption and she is reborn as Princess Hopkins by an adoring, middle-class adoptive mother.
Princess/Crane inhabits parallel worlds, using her scientific precocity and formidable intellect to attain an inner continuity that remains unfazed, nonjudgmental, and cheerful. Witty and richly intelligent, arch and earnest,Salvationhas a Dickensian narrative reach, an empathetic heart, and a naturalist's eye for both the vagaries and the logic of human nature.
Born into a family of three former charlatan preachers and two older siblings living in poverty in rural Iowa, Crane is a budding scientist with a rich awareness of the natural world and her own precarious spot in it.
Crane narrates her life from the moment of birth through disfiguration in the womb to well-deserved elevation in the halls of academe. Separated from the sister and brother who tried to protect her in infancy, and assigned by welfare workers to life in a convent, Crane rebels. Her belligerence causes the nuns to put her up for adoption and she is reborn as Princess Hopkins by an adoring, middle-class adoptive mother.
Princess/Crane inhabits parallel worlds, using her scientific precocity and formidable intellect to attain an inner continuity that remains unfazed, nonjudgmental, and cheerful. Witty and richly intelligent, arch and earnest,Salvationhas a Dickensian narrative reach, an empathetic heart, and a naturalist's eye for both the vagaries and the logic of human nature.
