In America by Susan Sontag is a 387-page hardcover published by Karras Strauss Giroux, New York, 2000, stated first edition. Both the dust jacket and book are in very good condition.
Book Summary
In 1876 a group of Poles led by Maryna Zalezowska, Poland's great 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-graps 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.
In America is a bout 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.
