Friday 5 April 2013

Debut Spotlight: Amy Brill

Next month sees the publication of The Movement of Stars, a historical romance, by debut author Amy Brill which Danielle will be reviewing for us.  It sounds good so I cannot wait to hear what Danielle thought about it..

It is 1845, and Hannah Gardner Price dreams of a world infinitely larger than the small Quaker community where she has lived all 25 years of her life - for, as an amateur astronomer, she secretly hopes to discover a comet and win the King of Denmark's prize for doing so.

But she can only indulge her passion for astronomy as long as the men in her life - her father, brother and family friends - are prepared to support it, and so she treads a fine line between pursuing her dreams and submitting to the wishes and expectations of those around her. That line is crossed when Hannah meets Isaac Martin, a young black whaler from the Azores.
 
Isaac, like Hannah herself, has ambitions beyond his station. Drawn to him despite their differences, Hannah agrees to tutor him in the art of navigation. As their shared passion for the stars develops into something deeper, however, Hannah's standing in the community is called into question, and she has to choose: her dreams or her heart. 

Loosely inspired by the work of Maria Mitchell, the first American woman to become a professional astronomer, The Movement of Stars is, at its heart, a glorious - and unusual - love story. 

Amy Brill is an award-winning writer and producer who has worked for PBS and MTV. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Salon, Guernica, Time Out New York, and Redbook, among others, and anthologized in Before and After: Stories from New York and Lost and Found. She has won fellowships in fiction from the Edward Albee Foundation, Jentel, the Millay Colony, Fundacion Valparaíso, the Constance Saltonstall Foundation, and the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two small daughters. The Movement of Stars is her first novel.

If you'd like to find out more about Amy and this book, then why not head over to her website where you'll be able to find out about the inspiration for the book and the backstory.  You can also connect with Amy on Twitter and Facebook.

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