A major new novel by the award-winning author named by Granta as one of America's best young writers. Set at a remote beachfront cottage in the Hamptons one summer during the Second World War, A World Away follows the fortunes of the Langer family, whose oldest son, Rennie, is missing in action in the Pacific theater. As we are soon aware, there is another battle raging at the same time, this one on the domestic front, as Anne and James Langer's marriage begins to unravel. In part to repay her husband for his affair with a student, Anne begins a clandestine romance with a soldier stationed at a nearby base. Yet all the passion and tenderness she finds with her lover is unable to ease Anne's empty ache from having her family torn apart. Thousands of miles away, Rennie is wounded in the effort to drive the Japanese from the island of Attu in the Aleutians, as Dorothy, his young wife, gives birth alone in San Diego. When Rennie comes home, his spirit as wounded as his body, it's clear that James and Anne must repair their own broken lives if they're going to help their son heal and bring their family back together. A World Away is a rich, romantic story that has all the depth and generosity of spirit Stewart O'Nan's work is known for. Set against the backdrop of World War II, Stewart O'Nan's book A World Away is a graceful exploration of a family facing a series of devastating events. Stripped of the ideal touchstones of domestic life--an accepting community, fidelity, a country at peace--the Langers take up temporary residence in Long Island with James's dying father. There each family member drifts into emotional isolation, fueled by uncertainty and worry. At the center of the storm is James, a former high school teacher "on the wrong side of fifty" who has committed the classic middle-aged sin of falling in love with a student, and his wife, Anne, angry and resentful at having been emotionally erased. Their oldest son, Rennie, has finally enlisted and is now a medic on the Pacific front, while his younger brother, Jay, haunted by violent dreams, imagines Rennie's face on the body of every dead Newsreel soldier. Another newer, and not quite accepted, member of the family, Rennie's teenage war bride, Dorothy, brings a poignant edge to the novel as we follow her to San Diego where she lives, alone and frightened, waiting for the birth of their child. O'Nan's clean prose is a pleasure to read, and he infuses his characters' world with a quiet sensitivity, deftly capturing their loneliness. A World Away is a gentle and thoroughly compassionate portrait of a family stunned by change, struggling to regain its balance and its heart. Just as the Langers have no way of knowing if Rennie will come home, they are even more uncertain if they can, or will, return to each other. --Marianne Painter The Langer family, suffering during World War II from the emotional and physical fallout of infidelity, terminal illness, and combat injuries, moves back to the rundown home of the dying Langer grandfather, resigned to their misery yet hoping for a miracle of recovery. Ann Langer, bitter over husband James's recent affair with one of his high school students and mortified by son Rennie's conscientious objector status, barely speaks to the former and refuses to write to the latter, who is serving as a medic in the Aleutian Islands. Trained as a nurse, Anne finds both dispassionate solace tending to the needs of her father-in-law and passionate escape in the arms of a soldier stationed nearby. The Langers' young son Jay is tortured by his brother's absence, his grandfather's illness, and the raw disintegration of his parents' marriage. Enter Rennie's wife and newborn daughter and later Rennie himself, an injured wreck of his former self. Extraordinary for his sensitive climb into the minds and hearts of his characters, especially the deeply flawed Anne, O'Nan (Snow Angels, LJ 11/15/94) stuns his readers with his sudden dips in time, creating a compelling rhythm of power and frailty against an onslaught of hurt. Beautifully done.?Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. O'Nan's description of life in the face of daily devastation ... is unfaltering. In a sluggish novel from a usually compelling author, domestic tensions on the home front during World War II are at the center. O'Nan's specific focus is the shaky marriage of James and Anne, whose son, Rennie, is missing in action overseas. James has had an affair with a student; Anne turns the tables and has a liaison with a soldier stationed locally. James and Anne's recovery as a married couple is taking considerable time. Meanwhile, Rennie's wife faces childbirth without him; when he does return from battle, they must reacquaint themselves. With their family together again and growing, James and Anne, now more than ever, must find new grounding to secure their marriage. For all its luscious detail and careful attention to lang