Anne Tyler

Blair Brown

digging-to-america

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Morgan's Passing

Earthly Possessions

The Tin Can Tree

The Clock Winder

A Slipping Down Life

Discover the Pulitzer Prize-Winning Sunday Times bestselling author

Celestial Navigation

If Morning Ever Comes

Searching For Caleb

Breathing Lessons

A Patchwork Planet

Ladder of Years

Saint Maybe

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of French Braid

Back When We Were Grown-ups

Noah's Compass

The Beginner's Goodbye

A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOKER PRIZE GEM

Redhead by the Side of the Road

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Redhead by the Side of the Road

French Braid

The Accidental Tourist

The Amateur Marriage

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Digging to America

Wise and funny...a multidimensional exploration of what it means to belong, not only to a family but also to a nation

Out of this everyday material she spins gold: stories so achingly truthful, so achingly funny, so sad and so real that you can only marvel

Anne Tyler draws a comedy that is not so much brilliant as luminous – its observant sharpness sweetened by a generous understanding of human fallibility

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
 
Friday August 15th, 1997. Two tiny Korean babies are delivered to Baltimore to two families who have no more in common than this. Every year, on the anniversary of 'Arrival Day' their two extended families celebrate together, with more and more elaborately competitive parties, as little Susan and Jin-ho take roots and become American. 
 
Full of achingly hilarious moments and toe-curling misunderstandings, Digging to America is a novel about belonging and otherness, pride and prejudice, young love and unexpected old love, families and the impossibility of ever getting it right... 
 
OVER A MILLION ANNE TYLER BOOKS SOLD 
 
'She's changed my perception on life' Anna Chancellor 
 
'One of my favourite authors ' Liane Moriarty 
 
'She spins gold' Elizabeth Buchan 
 
'Anne Tyler has no peer' Anita Shreve 
 
'My favourite writer, and the best line-and-length novelist in the world' Nick Hornby 
 
'A masterly author' Sebastian Faulks 
 
'Tyler is not merely good, she is wickedly good' John Updike 
 
'I love Anne Tyler' Anita Brookner 
 
'Her fiction has strength of vision, originality, freshness, unconquerable humour' Eudora Welty 
 
 
© Anne Tyler 2006 (P) Penguin Audio 2014

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her bestselling novels include Breathing Lessons, The Accidental Tourist, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Ladder of Years, Back When We Were Grown-ups, Digging to America, A Spool of Blue Thread, Clock Dance, Redhead by the Side of the Road and French Braid. 
 
In 1989 she won the Pulitzer Prize; in 1994 she was nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as 'the greatest novelist writing in English'; and in 2012 she received the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. In 2015 A Spool of Blue Thread was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the Booker Prize; and in 2020 Redhead by the Side of the Road was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Digging to America by Anne Tyler, read by Blair Brown. 
 
Friday August 15th, 1997. The night the girls arrived. Two tiny Korean babies are delivered to Baltimore to two families who have no more in common than this. First there are the Donaldsons, decent Brad and homespun, tenacious Bitsy (with her 'more organic than thou' airs, who believes fervently that life can always be improved), two full sets of grandparents and a host of big-boned, confident relatives, taking delivery with characteristic American razzmatazz. Then there are the Yazdans, pretty, nervous Ziba (her family 'only one generation removed from the bazaar') and carefully assimilated Sami, with his elegant, elusive Iranian-born widowed mother Maryam, the grandmother-to-be, receiving their little bundle with wondering discretion. 
 
Every year, on the anniversary of 'Arrival Day' their two extended families celebrate together, with more and more elaborately competitive parties, as tiny, delicate Susan, wholesome, stocky Jin-ho and, later, her new little sister Xiu-Mei, take roots, become American... While Maryam, the optimistic pessimist, confident that if things go wrong - as well they may - she will manage as she has before, contrarily preserves her 'outsider' status, as if to prove that, despite her passport, she is only a guest in this bewildering country. 
 
Full of achingly hilarious moments (Xiu-Mei's 'pacifier' party is worthy of 'The Simpsons') and toe-curling misunderstandings, Digging to America is a novel with a deceptively small domestic canvas, and subtly large themes - it's about belonging and otherness, about insiders and outsiders, pride and prejudice, young love and unexpected old love, families and the impossibility of ever getting it right, about striving for connection and goodness against all the odds... And the end catches you by the throat, ambushes your emotions when you least expect it, as only Tyler can.

Digging to America

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