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I am a secret no one is able to tell.
Blythe Hallowell is sixteen when she is abducted by a survivalist and locked away in an abandoned missile silo in Eudora, Kansas. At first, she focuses frantically on finding a way out, until the harrowing truth of her new existence settles in - the crushing loneliness, the terrifying madness of a captor who believes he is saving her from the end of the world, and the persistent temptation to give up. But nothing prepares Blythe for the burden of raising a child in confinement. Determined to give the boy everything she has lost, she pushes aside the truth about a world he may never see for a myth that just might give meaning to their lives below ground. Years later, their lives are ambushed by an event at once promising and devastating. As Blythe's dream of going home hangs in the balance, she faces the ultimate choice - between survival and freedom.
Above is a riveting tale of resilience in which "stunning" (Daily Beast) new literary voice Isla Morley compels us to imagine what we would do if everything we had ever known was taken away. Like the bestselling authors of Room and The Lovely Bones before her, Morley explores the unthinkable with haunting detail and tenderly depicts our boundless capacity for hope.
"The tension diffuses toward the end, but the majority of the book is a stellar and surprising ride." - Publishers Weekly
"Morley crafts a menacingly sinister tale of imprisonment and eerily inventive story of survival that will appeal to fans of riveting psychological suspense and cut-throat dystopian fiction." - Booklist
"[Morley] tells a compelling story that builds suspense. While the truth of Dobbs's predictions may not surprise all readers, Morley's vision of a postapocalyptic Kansas is haunting enough to make for a true page-turner." - Library Journal
"A whole host of interesting ideas stuffed into a lopsided structure that doesn't support the author's high ambitions. Still, very intriguing and provocative." - Kirkus
This information about Above was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Isla Morley grew up in South Africa during apartheid, the child of a British father and fourth-generation South African mother. During the country's State of Emergency, she graduated from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth with a degree in English Literature. By 1994 she was one of the youngest magazine editors in South Africa, but left career, country and kin when she married an American and moved to California.
For more than a decade she pursued a career in non-profit work, focusing on the needs of women and children. Her debut novel, Come Sunday, was awarded the 2009 Kafka Prize for Fiction, and was a finalist for the Commonwealth Prize. Above, her second novel, was published in March 2014. Selected as a "Best Buzz Books Spring 2014" by PublishersLunch, it has been...
... Full Biography
Link to Isla Morley's Website
Name Pronunciation
Isla Morley: eye-la
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Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live
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