Congratulations to Susan Beth Miller on the publication of her novel, A Beautiful Land!
A Beautiful Land is a story of menace, the maternal imagination, and the forest primeval.
Raissa, middle daughter of three, watches her family flee their violence-torn homeland.
But she stays behind, bound to her birthplace by memories of a sweet young man.
Driven by danger and grief, Raissa struggles toward a mysterious forest and imagines solace through the unexpected allure of a child. She joins many who have fled their beautiful homeland. Each speaks in turn as they parse their tangled stories and consider whether they dare return to what once was home.
A Beautiful Land is available worldwide at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all major retailers as a paperback and e-book. (We recommend ordering it from your favorite local bookstore!
Praise for A Beautiful Land
Every genocide is unique, and yet the suffering and endurance of the survivors of each such outbreak of madness transcends both time and place. In A Beautiful Land, Susan Miller has rendered with exquisite compassion the struggles of those who have been exiled from their homes by the unspeakable violence of their former neighbors. Detail by detail, she follows their journeys as they attempt to carry on, to continue breathing, to continue loving, to comprehend what they have been through, to find a new home and perhaps even return to the old one. These characters and their stories are unforgettable.
—Eileen Pollack, author of The Professor of Immortality and Breaking and Entering
Throughout, Miller’s prose is crisp and powerful, with evocative imagery and metaphors that are often stunning … as she develops her expertly crafted characters, she beautifully and compellingly considers pressing human questions regarding evil, motherhood, and the possibility of redemption. A striking, searing work that will linger long in readers’ memories.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review), Best Indie Fiction List
Miller’s A Beautiful Land is rich in detail, often mythical in nature, timeless in relevance, and beautifully, thoughtfully, written. I feel as if I’ve been on a journey. She takes us into worlds we cannot see and reveals them. As with Indigo Rose, her ability to convey the human condition through character and events is as compelling as it is meaningful. I was drawn deeply into the story.
—James Meyer, author of These Fair Days
Susan Miller’s novel, A Beautiful Land, explores the lethal tension between rival ethnic groups and the resulting destroyed lives. With vivid prose and page-turning suspense, she follows the paths of Raissa and her son as they struggle to survive a deranged world in a mysterious forest and create a new family. Miller’s archetypal fable examines life after the worst has happened as the etched characters reinvent families, heal their humanity, and resurrect community.
—Ann Pearlman, author of the Pulitzer nominated Infidelity and The Christmas Cookie Clubseries
Susan Miller’s A Beautiful Land quickly bonded me with its truthful characters. I became enthralled by the sheer humanness of the heroine, Raissa. Susan Miller expresses a deep solidarity for the hardships her characters suffer, and Raissa shines throughout with an inner resiliency giving hope through whatever hardships life hands us.
—Doug Wheeler, host of the podcast From the Belly
About the Author
Susan Beth Miller lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is the author of Indigo Rose, a novel (Bantam 2004), and a number of psychology books: The Shame Experience; Shame in Context; Disgust: the gatekeeper emotion; When Parents Have Problems: a book for teens and older children who have a disturbed or difficult parent; and Emotions of Menace and Enchantment: horror, disgust, awe, and fascination
