Return to the world of FIREFLY LANE—now a Netflix series—from #1 New York Times bestselling author Kristin Hannah.
Once, a long time ago, I walked down a night-darkened road called Firefly Lane, all alone, on the worst night of my life, and I found a kindred spirit. That was our beginning. More than thirty years ago. TullyandKate. You and me against the world. Best friends forever. But stories end, don't they? You lose the people you love and you have to find a way to go on. . . .
Tully Hart has always been larger than life, a woman fueled by big dreams and driven by memories of a painful past. She thinks she can overcome anything until her best friend, Kate Ryan, dies. Tully tries to fulfill her deathbed promise to Kate—to be there for Kate's children—but Tully knows nothing about family or motherhood or taking care of people.
Sixteen-year-old Marah Ryan is devastated by her mother's death. Her father, Johnny, strives to hold the family together, but even with his best efforts, Marah becomes unreachable in her grief. Nothing and no one seems to matter to her . . . until she falls in love with a young man who makes her smile again and leads her into his dangerous, shadowy world.
Dorothy Hart—the woman who once called herself Cloud—is at the center of Tully's tragic past. She repeatedly abandoned her daughter, Tully, as a child, but now she comes back, drawn to her daughter's side at a time when Tully is most alone. At long last, Dorothy must face her darkest fear: Only by revealing the ugly secrets of her past can she hope to become the mother her daughter needs.
A single, tragic choice and a middle-of-the-night phone call will bring these women together and set them on a poignant, powerful journey of redemption. Each has lost her way, and they will need each one another—and maybe a miracle—to transform their lives.
An emotionally complex, heart-wrenching novel about love, motherhood, loss, and new beginnings, Fly Away reminds us that where there is life, there is hope, and where there is love, there is forgiveness. Told with her trademark powerful storytelling and illuminating prose, Kristin Hannah reveals why she is one of the most beloved writers of our day.
Return to the world of FIREFLY LANE—now a Netflix series—from #1 New York Times bestselling author Kristin Hannah.
Once, a long time ago, I walked down a night-darkened road called Firefly Lane, all alone, on the worst night of my life, and I found a kindred spirit. That was our beginning. More than thirty years ago. TullyandKate. You and me against the world. Best friends forever. But stories end, don't they? You lose the people you love and you have to find a way to go on. . . .
Tully Hart has always been larger than life, a woman fueled by big dreams and driven by memories of a painful past. She thinks she can overcome anything until her best friend, Kate Ryan, dies. Tully tries to fulfill her deathbed promise to Kate—to be there for Kate's children—but Tully knows nothing about family or motherhood or taking care of people.
Sixteen-year-old Marah Ryan is devastated by her mother's death. Her father, Johnny, strives to hold the family together, but even with his best efforts, Marah becomes unreachable in her grief. Nothing and no one seems to matter to her . . . until she falls in love with a young man who makes her smile again and leads her into his dangerous, shadowy world.
Dorothy Hart—the woman who once called herself Cloud—is at the center of Tully's tragic past. She repeatedly abandoned her daughter, Tully, as a child, but now she comes back, drawn to her daughter's side at a time when Tully is most alone. At long last, Dorothy must face her darkest fear: Only by revealing the ugly secrets of her past can she hope to become the mother her daughter needs.
A single, tragic choice and a middle-of-the-night phone call will bring these women together and set them on a poignant, powerful journey of redemption. Each has lost her way, and they will need each one another—and maybe a miracle—to transform their lives.
An emotionally complex, heart-wrenching novel about love, motherhood, loss, and new beginnings, Fly Away reminds us that where there is life, there is hope, and where there is love, there is forgiveness. Told with her trademark powerful storytelling and illuminating prose, Kristin Hannah reveals why she is one of the most beloved writers of our day.
Reviews-
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March 11, 2013
Prolific novelist Hannah revisits the characters, known to fans as “KateandTully,” of her bestselling Firefly Lane in this slow-paced but largely well-executed sequel. Tully Hart, the famous 50-year-old former host of the talk show The Girlfriend, isn’t dealing well with the recent death of her best friend Kate, whose daughter, Marah, has run away. Tully is Marah’s godmother, and Kate’s husband Johnny blames her for his daughter’s flight. With no one left to turn to, Tully runs her car into a cement block in a haze of booze and prescription drugs. In the hospital clinging to life, Tully faces her past and her pain, visits her dead friend, and decides whether or not life is worth living. Told in a shopworn form—turns and flashbacks from the perspectives of Marah, Johnny, and Tully—the plot is unnecessarily repetitive, at times bringing forward motion to a standstill, but fans will appreciate the depth of character as they wade toward a neatly tied-up and heart-warming denouement. Agent: Andrea Cirillo, the Jane Rotrosen Agency. -
March 1, 2013
Hannah's sequel to Firefly Lane (2008) demonstrates that those who ignore family history are often condemned to repeat it. When we last left Kate and Tully, the best friends portrayed in Firefly Lane, the friendship was on rocky ground. Now Kate has died of cancer, and Tully, whose once-stellar TV talk show career is in free fall, is wracked with guilt over her failure to be there for Kate until her very last days. Kate's death has cemented the distrust between her husband, Johnny, and daughter Marah, who expresses her grief by cutting herself and dropping out of college to hang out with goth poet Paxton. Told mostly in flashbacks by Tully, Johnny, Marah and Tully's long-estranged mother, Dorothy, aka Cloud, the story piles up disasters like the derailment of a high-speed train. Increasingly addicted to prescription sedatives and alcohol, Tully crashes her car and now hovers near death, attended by Kate's spirit, as the other characters gather to see what their shortsightedness has wrought. We learn that Tully had tried to parent Marah after her father no longer could. Her hard-drinking decline was triggered by Johnny's anger at her for keeping Marah and Paxton's liaison secret. Johnny realizes that he only exacerbated Marah's depression by uprooting the family from their Seattle home. Unexpectedly, Cloud, who rebuffed Tully's every attempt to reconcile, also appears at her daughter's bedside. Sixty-nine years old and finally sober, Cloud details for the first time the abusive childhood, complete with commitments to mental hospitals and electroshock treatments, that led to her life as a junkie lowlife and punching bag for trailer-trash men. Although powerful, Cloud's largely peripheral story deflects focus away from the main conflict, as if Hannah was loath to tackle the intractable thicket in which she mired her main characters. Unrelenting gloom relieved only occasionally by wrenching trauma; somehow, though, Hannah's storytelling chops keep the pages turning even as readers begin to resent being drawn into this masochistic morass.COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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March 1, 2013
Hannah's enthralling and touching sequel to Firefly Lane continues the tale of Tully and Kate's poignant friendship and the journey they still share even in death. Once Kate dies, her husband, Johnny, her daughter Marah, and her soul-sister Tully all fall apart as they struggle to deal with their loss and regret. Losing the only anchor she had, Tully counts on Johnny and the kids to help each other through this process, only to realize that she is shut out, leaving her to mourn alone. Tully quickly finds herself following in her mother's footsteps of addiction, ultimately ending up in a medically induced coma after an "accident." In this state Tully is guided and prodded by Kate to see where things have gone right, where they've gone wrong, and where they can be repaired with some healing and some forgiveness--especially if Tully is willing to face her own past and that of her mother, and not fly away with Kate. VERDICT A moving read about mothers and daughters, families, friends, second chances, love, heartbreak, faith, grieving, and healing. Tissues required.--Anne M. Miskewitch, Chicago P.L.
Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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March 15, 2013
Hannah's Firefly Lane (2008), which centered on best-friends-forever Tully Hart and Kate Mularkey, is arguably her most popular work. Her follow-up gives readers an idea of what life is like for Tully and Kate's daughter Marah in the wake of Kate's death from cancer. It's not a pretty picture. Tully, who walked away from her successful talk show after Kate got sick, finds that her career isn't waiting for her when she is ready to come back. Overwhelmed by grief and shunned by Johnny, Kate's grieving husband who wants Tully to stay away from him and Kate's children, Tully turns to prescription drugs and alcohol. Teenage Marah, once popular and brash, retreats into herself. Then hope comes from the most unlikely of sources: Tully's wayward mother, finally sober and now, on the cusp of 70, possibly ready to be the mother Tully has always craved. Readers will be reaching for tissues as they watch the characters they grew to love in Firefly Lane struggle to make peace with Kate's death and find happiness and love. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: So popular is Firefly Lane that Hannah's highly anticipated sequel will be launched with a 500,000 print run, a national author tour, and an enormous promotional campaign.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.) -
Publishers Weekly on Home Front
"By reversing traditional expectations, Hannah (Night Road) calls attention to the modern female soldier and offers a compassionate, poignant look at the impact of war on family."
- People Magazine "Home Front's heart-wrenching portrayal of one veteran's trials points out how much training goes into preparing for war–and how little is done to teach returning soldiers how to be parents again."
- Family Circle on Home Front "A stirring, inspiring celebration of heroism in its many incarnations."
- Seattle Times on Home Front "Hannah's best work yet."
