Virginia Pye – författare

During the dangerous summer of 1937, a newly widowed American missionary finds herself and her teenage son caught up in the midst of a Japanese invasion of North China and the simultaneous rise of Communism. Meanwhile a charismatic Red Army officer requests her help and seems to have shared some surprising secret about her husband. Shirley must manage her grief even as she navigates between her desire to help the idealistic Chinese Reds fight the Japanese by serving as a nurse and the need to save both herself and her son by escaping the war-ravaged country before it's too late. Taking her own grandmother's life as inspiration, Virginia Pye, author of the critically-acclaimed debut novel River of Dust, has written a stunning new novel of Americans in China on the cusp of World War II.

Annie Burke floats aimlessly through her twenties until she bumps into a former high school crush: Freddie Marcatelli, captain of all the teams and still a local star. As they start to date, her suspicion that they’re from different universes is confirmed when she invites him to visit her mother’s beautiful garden. Annie relishes that magical place where she tries to hold onto her childhood and her parents as they age. But Freddie has other plans for them all. He comes from a family of morning glories that bloom and block out the light, while she is from a more delicate species that may or may not make it to the next season.

In the summer of 2020, social justice protests and the removal of Confederate monuments rock the city of Richmond, Virginia, as the marriages of two estranged sisters implode.When Cynthia's husband, Bobby, can no longer hide his dire financial situation, their union finally ruptures. Melissa, her sister, has dedicated herself so fully to racial justice activism that she becomes alienated from her own Black husband.As the summer heats up and their marriages veer in opposite directions, the sisters have no choice but to turn to one another. Meanwhile, their husbands conspire in a racial reckoning that their ancestors-one old Virginia White, the other old Virginia Black-would never have dreamed of.When secrets within marriage erode trust, all couples must decide what's more important: being true to who they are as individuals or holding on to an illusion of the past.Marriage and Other Monuments is a must-listen multigenerational drama set against a tumultuous time of racial tension in the South.

In the summer of 2020, social justice protests and the removal of Confederate monuments rock the city of Richmond, Virginia, as the marriages of two estranged sisters implode.When Cynthia's husband, Bobby, can no longer hide his dire financial situation, their union finally ruptures. Melissa, her sister, has dedicated herself so fully to racial justice activism that she becomes alienated from her own Black husband.As the summer heats up and their marriages veer in opposite directions, the sisters have no choice but to turn to one another. Meanwhile, their husbands conspire in a racial reckoning that their ancestors-one old Virginia White, the other old Virginia Black-would never have dreamed of.When secrets within marriage erode trust, all couples must decide what's more important: being true to who they are as individuals or holding on to an illusion of the past.Marriage and Other Monuments is a must-listen multigenerational drama set against a tumultuous time of racial tension in the South.

On the windswept plains of northwestern China, Mongol bandits swoop down upon an American missionary couple and steal their small child. The Reverend sets out in search of the boy and becomes lost in the rugged, corrupt countryside populated by opium dens, sly nomadic warlords and traveling circuses. This upright Midwestern minister develops a following among the Chinese peasants and is christened Ghost Man for what they perceive are his otherworldly powers. Grace, his young ingenue wife, pregnant with their second child, takes to her sick bed in the mission compound, where visions of her stolen child and lost husband begin to beckon to her from across the plains. The foreign couple's savvy and dedicated Chinese servants, Ahcho and Mai Lin, accompany and eventually lead them through dangerous territory to find one another again. With their Christian beliefs sorely tested, their concept of fate expanded, and their physical health rapidly deteriorating, the Reverend and Grace may finally discover an understanding between them that is greater than the vast distance they have come.