Vaclav and Lena seem destined for each other. They meet as children in an ESL class in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Vaclav is precocious and verbal. Lena, struggling with English, takes comfort in the safety of his adoration, his noisy, loving home, and the care of Rasia, his big-hearted mother. Vaclav imagines their story unfolding like a fairy tale or the perfect illusion from his treasured Magician's Almanac, but among the many truths to be discovered in Haley Tanner's wondrous debut is that happily-ever-after is never a foregone conclusion.One day, Lena does not show up for school. She has disappeared from Vaclav's and his family's lives as if by a cruel magic trick. For the next seven years, Vaclav says goodnight to Lena without fail, wondering if she is doing the same somewhere. On the eve of Lena's seventeenth birthday he finds out.
Haley Tanner has the originality and verve of a born storyteller and the boldness to imagine a world in which love can overcome the most difficult circumstances. In Vaclav & Lena she has created two unforgettable young protagonists who evoke the joy, the confusion, and the passion of having a profound, everlasting connection with someone else.
292 pages (May 2011)
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Haley Tanner at the Gaithersburg Book Festival:
This title is available for download as an eBook and as an eAudioBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.
Title Read-alikes: The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach; Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok; Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson; The Leavers by Lisa Ko; Saints for All Occasions by J. Courtney Sullivan; On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong; And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini; The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende; A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza; Normal People by Sally Rooney; The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern; Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman; The Margot Affair by Sanaë Lemoine; and The Sun Collective by Charles Baxter.
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