In America

In America is Susan Sontag's bold, brilliant new novel—a kaleidoscopic portrait of America on the cusp of modernity. As she did in her enormously popular novel The Volcano Lover (1992), which recast the legendary love affair of Emma Hamilton and Horatio Nelson in a fresh, provocative light, Sontag once again starts from a story located in the past to create a fictional world full of contemporary resonance.

In 1876 a group of Poles led by Maryna Załężowska, Poland's greatest actress, emigrate to the United States and travel to California to found a "utopian" commune—they think of it as a new Brook Farm—outside the village of Anaheim. Maryna, who has renounced her career for this venture, is accompanied by her small son and her husband, an aristocrat in revolt against his family; in her entourage is a rising young writer who is in love with her. Sontag's gripping narrative shows us an exotic, still largely empty, up-for-grabs southern California, with European newcomers lording it over native Californians and Native Americans. When the commune fails and most of the emigres return to Poland, Maryna stays, learns English, and—as Marina Zalenska forges a new, even more triumphant career on the American stage. A diva on a par with Sarah Bernhardt, Maryna soon forms her own company and crisscrosses the country in her private railroad car, year after year, eventually playing opposite Edwin Booth, the greatest American actor of the age.

In America is about many things: a woman's search for self-transformation; the fate of idealism; a life in the theatre; the many varieties of love; and, not least of all, stories and storytelling itself. Operatic in the scope and intensity of the emotions it depicts (Minnie from Puccini's Girl of the Golden West makes a startling appearance), richly detailed and visionary in its account of America, and peopled with unforgettable characters, In America is Susan Sontag's largest, most astonishing achievement.