Zorrie
Zorrie by Laird Hunt, published by riverrun on January 6, 2022, is a literary fiction work that explores the life of Zorrie Underwood, a woman shaped by her modest upbringing in rural Indiana during the Great Depression. After the loss of her parents, Zorrie navigates a series of hardships, including living with her aunt and facing further loss, which leads her to a life of survival through various odd jobs. The narrative captures her journey as she eventually finds work at a radium processing plant, where the girls glow from the radioactive material, symbolizing both danger and resilience.
Throughout the novel, readers will encounter Zorrie’s quest for love and community as she returns to her hometown of Hillisburg. The story spans her lifetime, reflecting the transformative events of the 20th century and the dreams that drive her forward, alongside the losses she cannot escape. With themes of perseverance and the search for belonging, Zorrie offers an intimate portrait set against the backdrop of a quintessentially American landscape, inviting readers to engage with the complexities of a woman’s life shaped by both personal and historical challenges. This edition contains 208 pages and is presented in English.
Official synopsis Publisher
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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