A dazzling new novel about memory and identity set in Paris, Tennessee, in the aftermath of the American Civil War from the Booker Prize–shortlisted author
Winona Cole, an orphaned child of the Lakota Indians, finds herself growing up in an unconventional household on a farm in West Tennessee. Raised by her adoptive father John Cole and his brother-in-arms Thomas McNulty, this odd little family scrapes a living on Lige Magan’s farm with the help of two freed slaves, the Bougereau siblings. They try to keep the brutal outside world at bay, along with their memories of the past.
But Tennessee is a state still riven by the bitter legacy of the Civil War, and when first Winona and then Tennyson Bouguereau are violently attacked by forces unknown, Colonel Purton raises the militia to quell the rebels and night-riders who are massing on the outskirts of town. Armed with a knife, Tennyson’s borrowed gun, and the courage of her famous warrior mother, Winona decides to take matters into her own hands and embarks on a quest for justice which will uncover the dark secrets of her past and finally reveal to her who she really is.
Exquisitely written and thrumming with the irrepressible spirit of a young girl on the brink of adulthood, A Thousand Moons is a glorious story of love and redemption.
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“In Winona, who sees both the beauty and the piercing loss of her world, Barry has created a vivid if didactic heroine (‘Whitemen in the main just see slaves and Indians. They don’t see the single souls’). This earnest tale will stay with readers.”
— Publishers Weekly
“A page-turner with heart and soul…Like all of Barry’s best fiction, it examines life from an angle that makes it look as fresh as a new moon.”
— The Times (London)“His work reminds us how much we need these rare gifts of the natural storyteller, for reckoning with our past and present.”
— The Guardian (London)“The reader may be grateful for…the endearing, confiding voice of Winona…It’s her touchingly resilient spirit that gives the book its beating heart.”
— Irish Times (Dublin)“Barry knows that it is too much to look for redemption in a story like Winona’s, but in his telling he shows that love offers at least a spark of hope.”
— Financial Times (London)“A poetic sensibility runs through this luminous novel…Highly recommended.”
— Library Journal (starred review)“This beautifully rendered historical…is equal parts thrilling and meditative.”
— BooklistBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Sebastian Barry, named Irish fiction laureate in 2018, is a playwright and author whose novels include A Long Long Way, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, as was The Secret Scripture, which was also a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and winner of the Costa Book of the Year Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and the Irish Novel of the Year. His plays have been produced in London, Dublin, Sydney, and New York.
Kyla Garcia is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. Born and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey, she discovered acting at the age of eight when she played Lady Macbeth in a children’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy. She made her off-Broadway debut at fifteen when she played Dorothy in Oz: A Twisted Musical. Eleven years after she discovered her passion for acting, she would go on to play Lady Macbeth once again in London at the Globe Theatre, where she studied Shakespeare during her third year at Mason Gross School of the Arts. She received her BFA in acting from Rutgers University.