Two Lives

A sweeping, absorbing novel about the fate of two children sent from Europe to the English countryside to escape the onset of World War II and the aftermath of the decisions they made there.

An image appeared in her mind, a childhood memory she hadn't known it contained: a conductor leaning over her on a train late at night, speaking to her in a language she didn't speak, one of his eyes looking at her while the other stared, unblinking, straight through her. She felt her skin prickle everywhere at once.

Evelyn Lieberman has always been good at carrying her grief while carrying on. A widow in a Florida retirement community, she keeps busy with regular visits to her grandchildren and a full social calendar with her friends, the Girls. She speaks little about her past and is proud of the life she has built in the present.

When Evelyn's friend recommends a book by a prominent British author, Simon Glaser, Evelyn is startled to find that the novel tells a hauntingly familiar story. She decides to seek out the book's writer, the only other person who could have known the details of what happened all those decades ago.

Spanning prewar Vienna, the Yorkshire moors, postwar New York, a Florida retirement community, and the London literary world, Two Lives is a sweeping and masterful exploration of inheritance, memory, and the human yearning to reconcile our pasts with our present and take the measure of our lives.