Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Biography, Literature & Literary studies
Weblink
lauramcbrideauthor.com/

WE ARE CALLED TO RISE

Laura McBride

We Are Called to Rise is a boomtown tale, in which the lives of people from different backgrounds and experiences collide in a stunning coincidence: a young Albanian immigrant boy, a soldier returning from war, and a middle-aged woman whose marriage is falling apart--intersect in an unexpected and shocking way.

An immigrant boy whose family is struggling to assimilate. A middle-aged housewife coping with an imploding marriage and a troubled son. A social worker at home in the darker corners of Las Vegas. A wounded soldier recovering from an injury he can’t remember getting. By the time we realize how these voices will connect, the impossible and perhaps the unbearable has already happened. We Are Called to Rise is a boomtown tale, in which the lives of people from different backgrounds and experiences collide in a stunning coincidence. When presented the opportunity to sink into despair, these characters rise. Through acts of remarkable charity and bravery, they rescue themselves. Emotionally powerful yet tender and intimate, We Are Called to Rise is a novel of redemption and unexpected love.

Laura McBride teaches at the College of Southern Nevada and lives with her husband and two children in Las Vegas. She graduated with a degree in American Studies from Yale University and wrote part of We Are Called to Rise, her first novel, while in residency at Yaddo.

Available products
Book Published 2014-06-01 by Simon & Schuster
Book Published 2014-06-01 by Simon & Schuster

Comments

Interview: Full interview can be heard (starts about an hour in) Read more...

How might children in crisis be helped if everyone—teachers, social workers, troubled parents, and the courts—worked together for their best interests? This is the big question at the heart of this well-written first novel…McBride has written an urgent morality tale for our times in the form of this poignant and gripping debut.

Laura McBride had me hooked on her novel by page two, the beginning of a roller coaster ride of emotions powered by her gorgeously strong writing. She took me to sorrow and despair and then to the heights of love and forgiveness, where we find our best selves. We are Called to Rise is a powerful, memorable achievement.

Conversation between Laura McBride and Eleanor Brown Read more...

Both tense and touching, intimate and global, Laura McBride's debut is a genuinely affecting story of innocence, resilience, and the surprising ties that connect us all. The characters' voices are so real, so raw and human, you will find yourself thinking of them long after you have turned the last page.

UK: Simon & Schuster UK

Here is the powerful story of the way in which war detonates far from battlefields, exploding lives in a single irrevocable moment. Here are unforgettable voices that need to be heard as urgently as this richly imagined story needs to be told. Like a solitary bell We Are Called toi Rise reverberated long after I'd put it down. I can't stop thinking about it."

McBride’s characters are warm with pulsing vitality, their interior struggles as dramatic as the painful events that will alter each of their paths. The narrative is compelling enough to draw the reader along, even as it skips from one character’s point of view to another. And it is a testament to the author’s mature voice and storytelling talent that we are willing to take to heart the lessons her story offers.

Laura McBride's searing and expansive vision will hold you in its grip from start to finish. Her Las Vegas characters outshine even the glitz of that city in their fierce humanity."

t's been a long time since I invested myself as a reader so thoroughly, so hopefully, in a character as I did for the small, young life at the center of this poignant narrative. Laura McBride writes with the foresight and compassion of the best storytellers. Her range of voices and perspectives is as impressive as her ability to plumb the depths of ordinary lives touched by extraordinary circumstances. This is a tender yet urgent entreaty not to scale impossible heights but to rise to the intimate challenge, and to call forth the love needed, to piece together a child’s shattered home and heart."

Tremendous enthusiasm for Laura McBride’s WE ARE CALLED TO RISE! June 2014 #1 Indie Next List Barnes & Noble Discover ABA Summer/Fall 2014 Indies Introduce Debut Authors Book Passage June First Edition Club

With this novel, Laura McBride dismantles the American dream. Set in Las Vegas, our most opulent nowhere, a long-running marriage collapses in a single moment. A boy’s family crumbles in a clash of cultures. Soldiers return from bad wars detonated—the pins pulled on their fragile minds. Still, they must all somehow move forward out of these losses, into futures for which they have no assembly instructions. Strength is simply their last available option, they’d rather not have to come up with it. And it is precisely this—the reluctance with which they become their best selves—that makes this such an emotionally powerful story

Told in pitch-perfect alternating voices, Rise is reminischent of the divisive movie Crash. But McBride loves her characters well and one feels her own sense of anguish as they hurtle toward catastrophe. Her language is never trite, and the life lessons aren't slick. It gturns out that with all that luck and longing and surface transience, Las Vegas is the perfect backdrop for a universal story about the messy wonders of community.