Beyond That, the Sea

October 1, 2022

Following Hargrave's adult debut, the Betty Trask honoree The Mercies, The Dance Tree spins off from real-life events as it visits 1518 Strasbourg, France, where women have begun dancing wildly in the town square and provoked a state of emergency (40,000-copy first printing). Opening in a fishing village in British colonial--ruled Singapore, Suicide Club author Heng's The Great Reclamation features a sweet boy with an extraordinary gift--he sees shifting islands no one else can--who comes of age during the Japanese occupation and, with a neighborhood girl, ends up remapping the future (75,000-copy first printing). Following the multi-best-booked Yellow Wind, Johnson's The House of Eve intertwines the stories of two young Black women--15-year-old Ruby, whose college ambitions are threatened by an ill-advised affair, and Howard University student Eleanor, looking for acceptance from her boyfriend's elite Black family. In Loesch's debut, The Last Russian Doll, a Russian �migr� studying at Oxford returns to Moscow after her mother's death and uncovers a family tragedy stretching back to the 1917 Revolution. A prize winner in Germany and a publishing phenomenon there and in the UK, where Berlin-based British-Ghanian Otoo is a Cambridge writer in residence, Ada's Room features four Adas: a 15th-century West African woman who confronts a Portuguese slave trader, Victorian England's Ada Lovelace, a Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp inmate, and a contemporary resident of Berlin, connected to them all in spirit. Following The Yellow Bird Sings, a National Jewish Book Award finalist, Rosner's Once We Were Home builds on real-life events to tell the stories of Jewish children wrenched from their families during World War II--like Ana, who remembers the mother who smuggled her out of a Polish ghetto, and Ana's brother, who knows only the family who raised him. In Spence-Ash's Beyond That, the Sea, Bea Thompson is sent from bomb-blasted World War II London to live in safety with a family in Boston, MA, and becomes so contented with her new life that she is reluctant to return home (150,000-copy first printing). From the No. 1 New York Times best-selling Walls, Hang the Moon follows the life of feisty young Sallie Kincaid, daughter of the big man about town in Prohibition-era Virginia, who's back home to reclaim her place nine years after being ejected from the family. The USA Today best-selling Webb's Strangers in the Night replays the romance between Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner (100,000-copy paperback and 30,000-copy hardcover first printing). In Two Wars and a Wedding, the New York Times best-selling Willig follows aspiring archaeologist Betsy Hayes from 1896 Greece, where she ends up tending the wounded as fighting breaks out with Turkey, and 1898 Cuba, where she serves with the Red Cross during the Spanish American War, hoping to find a lost friend (75,000-copy first printing).

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Starred review from January 9, 2023
A young’s woman’s family loyalties are divided as she leaves her London home for Boston during WWII in Spence-Ash’s magnetic debut. In 1940, 11-year-old Bea Thompson’s parents take advantage of a short-lived program to keep British children out of harm’s way during the war, and ship her to America. Bea stays in Boston with the wealthy Gregorys and quickly becomes part of their family, which includes sons 13-year-old William and nine-year-old Gerald. Nancy Gregory treats Bea as the daughter she never had, while her husband, Ethan, sees Bea as a welcome addition to the household, despite his austere manner. Bea learns how to swim at the Gregorys’ island house in Maine, excels academically, and, as a teen, falls for the handsome but mercurial William. At the end of the war, Bea returns to a London transformed by bombings and copes with the absence of her father, who died from a heart attack. Torn by her dedication to the Gregorys, she tries to acclimate to life in London with her mother and new stepfather, and after finishing school and finding work as a teacher, Bea’s surprised by a visit from William. The author’s choice to highlight an obscure corner of history with the overseas program adds a note of poignancy to Bea’s story, as her voyage took place shortly before two other ships were sunk by the Germans. As well, Spence-Ash generates a stronger emotional charge with her contrasting portrayals of the two families, whose cultural and economic differences make it difficult for Bea to find her own way. Readers will be riveted. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman Literary Agency.

February 1, 2023
Domestic worlds collide when an 11-year-old evacuated from England to the United States during World War II is absorbed into a new family, reconfiguring both its equilibrium and her own. Spence-Ash's debut takes a multiperspective approach to one minor wartime decision that impacts multiple lives across time and place--from the 1940s to the 1970s in London, Boston, and on a magical island off the coast of Maine. The last is where the Gregory family spends each summer, as Beatrix Thompson will learn to do too, during the five years, from 1940 to '45, she spends with the Gregorys: parents Ethan and Nancy, sons William and Gerald. Back in Blitz-stricken London, her parents, Reginald and Millie, miss Bea intensely and argue about the wisdom of Reginald's insistence on her departure. Reginald is a factory worker with "no money in savings at all," while the Gregorys are "house-rich and dollar poor," Ethan employed as a teacher. The class divide is just one element to which Beatrix must adapt, but as the daughter Nancy always wanted and a treasured companion to both boys, her new role develops into a positive, enlarging experience for all parties in America. After the war and Beatrix's return to England, her relationship with the Gregorys begins to drift. And, with the novel's decade-spanning timeline and episodic structure, so does Spence-Ash's plot momentum. Postwar relationships, children, and deaths occur, accompanied by glimpses of tenderness and connection, but there's also a hollow restlessness to the narrative, compounded by the sketchiness of some characters, including a major one who disappears without much impact. It's the women who emerge most vividly from this delicate yet porous story that eventually yields to a predictable conclusion. A circuitous but sensitive novel from an author to watch.

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February 15, 2023
At the end of summer in 1940, Millie and Reg made the tough choice to send 11-year-old Beatrix to a family in the U.S. as Germany intensified its attacks on England. Nancy and Ethan Gregory, along with 13-year-old William and nine-year-old Gerald, welcome Bea at Boston Harbor, and nothing will ever be the same again. With every new experience Bea shares with the Gregorys, what part of her previous life does she need to let go of? With lively characters that continue to grow and change over four decades, each providing their own unique perspective on historical events, Spence-Ash explores complex family dynamics without villains. Readers will feel the pull of new fictional friends from the first to the last page, and long afterward. Details of daily life build a strong sense of time and place in both countries and time frames further deepening this outstanding debut novelist's portrayal of her characters. Spence-Ash's first novel will appeal to fans of Pam Jenoff, Margot Livesey, and Ann Packer.

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