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DIGGING TO AMERICA
By: Anne Tyler
In what is perhaps her richest and most deeply searching novel...a story about what it is to be an American, and about Maryam Yazdan, who after 35 years in this country must finally come to terms with her "outsiderness."
Knopf
May 2006
288 pages
ISBN: 0307263940
Hardcover
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Fiction
Two families, who would otherwise never have come together, meet by chance at the Baltimore airportΓ’β¬βthe Donaldsons, a very American couple, and the Yazdans, MaryamΓ’β¬β’s fully assimilated son and his attractive Iranian American wife. Each couple is awaiting the arrival of an adopted infant daughter from Korea. After the babies from distant Asia are delivered, Bitsy Donaldson impulsively invites the Yazdans to celebrate with an Γ’β¬Εarrival party,Γ’β¬Β an event that is repeated every year as the two families become more deeply intertwined. Even independent-minded Maryam is drawn in. But only up to a point. When she finds herself being courted by one of the Donaldson clan, a good-hearted man of her vintage, recently widowed and still recovering from his wifeΓ’β¬β’s death, suddenly all the values she cherishesΓ’β¬βher traditions, her privacy, her othernessΓ’β¬βare threatened. Somehow this big American takes up so much space that the orderly boundaries of her life feel invaded. A luminous novel brimming with subtle, funny, and tender observations that cast a penetrating light on the American way as seen from two perspectives, those who are born here and those who are still struggling to fit in.
 Media BuzzFresh Air - NPR - December 7, 2006
Today - May 20, 2006
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