Zorrie

Finalist for the 2021 National Book Award (Fiction)

"It was Indiana, it was the dirt she had bloomed up out of, it was who she was, what she felt, how she thought, what she knew."

As a girl, Zorrie Underwood's modest and hardscrabble home county was the only constant in her young life. After losing both her parents, Zorrie moved in with her aunt, whose own death orphaned Zorrie all over again, casting her off into the perilous realities and sublime landscapes of rural, Depression-era Indiana. Drifting west, Zorrie survived on odd jobs, sleeping in barns and under the stars, before finding a position at a radium processing plant. At the end of each day, the girls at her factory glowed from the radioactive material.

But when Indiana calls Zorrie home, she finally finds the love and community that have eluded her in and around the small town of Hillisburg. And yet, even as she tries to build a new life, Zorrie discovers that her trials have only begun.

Spanning an entire lifetime, a life convulsed and transformed by the events of the 20th century, Laird Hunt's extraordinary novel offers a profound and intimate portrait of the dreams that propel one tenacious woman onward and the losses that she cannot outrun. Set against a harsh, gorgeous, quintessentially American landscape, this is a deeply empathetic and poetic novel that belongs on a shelf with the classics of Willa Cather, Marilynne Robinson, and Elizabeth Strout.

“A virtuosic portrait of midcentury America itself - physically stalwart, unerringly generous, hopeful that tragedy can be mitigated through faith in land and neighbor alike...This is not fiction as literary uproar. This is a refined realism of the sort Flaubert himself championed, storytelling that accrues detail by lean detail...Hunt's prose is galvanized by powerful questions. Who were those forebears who tilled the land for decades, seemingly without complaint? How did they fashion happiness, or manage soaring passions, in their conformist communities? He re-examines the pastoral with ardent precision...What Hunt ultimately gives us is a pure and shining book, an America where community becomes a 'symphony of souls, ' a sustenance greater than romance or material wealth for those wise enough to join in - New York Times Zorrie is a quiet novel about an ordinary life. And when you're ordinary, you need resilience like Zorrie's to survive in an uncaring world. Laird Hunt's short and affecting novel follows Zorrie Underwood's life from childhood in Depression-era Indiana, when she's orphaned, to early adulthood, when she's left on her own, to an eventual marriage and working life - O Magazine's Most Anticipated Historical Fiction Novels of 2021 Zorrie is Hunt at his best. Compelling from its first page. [A] tender, glowing novel that is just as beautiful as Marilynne Robinson's Gilead or Denis Johnson's Train Dreams . - Observer, Best Book of 2021 Hunt's skill is in taking familiar themes such as grief, love, memory and the passage of time and making us think afresh about the hastening decades. - Spectator Throughout these 160 pages, a life unfurls, passes and lingers. Laird Hunt's Zorrie is a magnificent character who truly feels like a friend - gentle, unsentimental and poetic. - Sunday Business Post Review”

A virtuosic portrait of midcentury America itself - physically stalwart, unerringly generous, hopeful that tragedy can be mitigated through faith in land and neighbor alike...This is not fiction as literary uproar. This is a refined realism of the sort Flaubert himself championed, storytelling that accrues detail by lean detail...Hunt's prose is galvanized by powerful questions. Who were those forebears who tilled the land for decades, seemingly without complaint? How did they fashion happiness, or manage soaring passions, in their conformist communities? He re-examines the pastoral with ardent precision...What Hunt ultimately gives us is a pure and shining book, an America where community becomes a 'symphony of souls, ' a sustenance greater than romance or material wealth for those wise enough to join in New York Times
Zorrie is a quiet novel about an ordinary life. And when you're ordinary, you need resilience like Zorrie's to survive in an uncaring world. Laird Hunt's short and affecting novel follows Zorrie Underwood's life from childhood in Depression-era Indiana, when she's orphaned, to early adulthood, when she's left on her own, to an eventual marriage and working life O Magazine's Most Anticipated Historical Fiction Novels of 2021

Zorrie is Hunt at his best.

Compelling from its first page.

[A] tender, glowing novel that is just as beautiful as Marilynne Robinson's Gilead or Denis Johnson's Train Dreams. -- Anthony Doerr Observer, Best Book of 2021
Hunt's skill is in taking familiar themes such as grief, love, memory and the passage of time and making us think afresh about the hastening decades. Spectator
Throughout these 160 pages, a life unfurls, passes and lingers. Laird Hunt's Zorrie is a magnificent character who truly feels like a friend - gentle, unsentimental and poetic. Sunday Business Post Review

Laird Hunt is the author of eight novels, a collection of stories, and two book-length translations from the French. He has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and won the Anisfield--Wolf Award for Fiction, the Grand Prix de Litterature Americaine, and Italy's Bridge prize. His reviews and essays have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and many others. He teaches in the Department of Literary Arts at Brown University and lives in Providence.

Finalist for the 2021 National Book Award (Fiction) "It was Indiana, it was the dirt she had bloomed up out of, it was who she was, what she felt, how she thought, what she knew." As a girl, Zorrie Underwood's modest and hardscrabble home county was the only constant in her young life. After losing both her parents, Zorrie moved in with her aunt, whose own death orphaned Zorrie all over again, casting her off into the perilous realities and sublime landscapes of rural, Depression-era Indiana. Drifting west, Zorrie survived on odd jobs, sleeping in barns and under the stars, before finding a position at a radium processing plant. At the end of each day, the girls at her factory glowed from the radioactive material.But when Indiana calls Zorrie home, she finally finds the love and community that have eluded her in and around the small town of Hillisburg. And yet, even as she tries to build a new life, Zorrie discovers that her trials have only begun. Spanning an entire lifetime, a life convulsed and transformed by the events of the 20th century, Laird Hunt's extraordinary novel offers a profound and intimate portrait of the dreams that propel one tenacious woman onward and the losses that she cannot outrun. Set against a harsh, gorgeous, quintessentially American landscape, this is a deeply empathetic and poetic novel that belongs on a shelf with the classics of Willa Cather, Marilynne Robinson, and Elizabeth Strout.

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