A Beautiful Land

by Susan Beth Miller

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. The soft cover will be available October 8.

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

ebook

First published October 8, 2021

Reviews

[Sujoya - theoverbookedbibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5
A Beautiful Land by Susan Beth Miller is hard hitting emotional story that takes us on a journey through a war torn land in an unnamed region in East Africa torn apart by ethnic strife. Belonging to an ethnic group persecuted by a warring faction, siblings Jean de Dieu,Ritha ,Raissaand Hanni realize that they need to escape across the border to survive after their tribe is targeted with violence and execution in the hands of their oppressors .
Raissa , unwilling to leave her homeland and their family home which is filled with memories of her late parents decides to stay back only to take up work as domestic help ,disguised so as to protect herself from being identified, with the family who forcefully occupy their home . Her siblings who have reluctantly left her behind traverse the forests and marshlands , wandering through refugee camps and ultimately crossing the border . When Raissa faces possible discovery and peril she also decides to leave . She takes the young child of the family believing that that she should not leave him to be brought up by people who were hunting and murdering her people. Raissa creates a home for herself deep in the forest with her son whom she renames 'Dogood' out of hope that he will grow up to be a good person and do good deeds as opposed to those she views as evil, After years in the forest Raissa , fearing discovery and loss of her child also moves ahead on her journey ultimately reuniting with her family. Years later , they return to their own homeland , once again attempting to create a life for themselves on the very land they were once forced to flee.
This is not an easy or light read and some parts of the novel such as Raissa’s surviving years in the forest with a young child seemed a little hard to believe as would be Dogood’s mother’s discovery of her child and Raissa in the forest and then lack of any effort to claim him. The author does create a memorable cast of characters and weaves a beautiful story that takes us through decades in the lives of the siblings and Dogood. We get to know these characters not only through the challenges they face together but get to accompany them on their personal journeys of loss , trauma and survival and bear witness to how they evolve as strong individuals each fighting their own internal battles haunted by tragic memories while searching for a purpose to live and a place to call home. This is a story of family, love , war, sacrifice and homeland with vivid descriptions of nature and sensitive portrayal of relationships. I found Ritha’s journey particularly heart wrenching. The complicated relationship between Dogood and Raissa is poignantly portrayed .Touching upon themes of migration and displacement, generational trauma and man’s relationship with nature, A Beautiful Land is a moving and evocative novel.
“When the memories got too heavy and wanted to knock her down to the ground, she looked hard at them and said, I see you, I hear you, I remember each one of you. Then she put them in a little boat—like the basket for baby Moses she had learned about as a trusting child—and laid them down in a river, let them flow on past. This river circled round, so they would be back another day. And then, on that day as well, she would listen to them, look them in the eye, feel her heart breaking over their misery. Then one more time she would set them on the water.”

Thanks to NetGalley and Boyce & Dalton for the electronic review copy in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.





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[Robert Drews · Rating 5 out of 5]

“A Beautiful Land” by Susan Beth Miller is a story of survival and rebuilding when a beloved homeland is caught up in the violence of conflict and warfare. Along the way, the writing is searing as in
Daylight crept in. She wished it away, wanting night’s cover, but the dawn paid her no attention. She silently cursed the sun with nasty words.
Haunting as in
Did those who went mad and thought of nothing but murder go back to ploughing fields and nursing crops? How could that be? Could a farmer become a butcher, then once again a farmer, kindly to his neighbor?
Touching as in
She wasn’t ready for the fields to end. She wished they’d stretch forever, fresh and green and planted in one nice thing or another, because after the fields petered out to grassland, they’d all be looking for the tail end of that old road. And once they found it, they would be on the path to take them home.
More than this, however, the struggle of Raissa and Dogood and their family and friends could have been set anywhere with any expanse of characters where despair and hatred and the tragedies of innocents reign. In that sense, “A Beautiful Land” is timeless in its reach and boundless in its conflict of anguish and hope.
This is a story that will stay with you after the last page.

[David Arthur · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is complex literary fiction at its finest. Miller's writing is colored by prose that is weighty and eloquent, even when delving into such complex subjects as identity, sense of place, and those who are displaced by war and violence. This book left me thinking about it long after I had finished. Thanks to Boyle & Dalton for the opportunity to review A Beautiful Land by Susan Beth Miller.

[Joshua Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Susan Miller brings us a touching exploration of life in exile with A Beautiful Land! When ethnic tensions turn to violence and genocide, Raissa and her family are uprooted from their normal lives. We follow Raissa and other survivors as they attempt to pick up the pieces and move forward. This is a very touching book and Miller masterfully brings fiction to life through the lives of several characters! It was a wonderfully mesmerizing dive into these lives and struggles, and the book even takes on a mystical sense at times. If you love moral struggles with depth and rich characters, definitely come explore A Beautiful Land!

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful and moving book. In simple and lyrical language, Miller brings us into the lives of three sisters and a brother who are uprooted by an explosion of ethnic hatred and forced to flee their home. Their journey is terrifying and their story gripping, as one of the sisters goes deep into the forest, learning to survive in primitive conditions, and the others search to find shelter and safety beyond their native land. Each is marked by the experience in his or her own particular way, and much of the book explores how they react in the years following their exile, how their lives are changed, and how they attempt to find a place in the aftermath of the upheaval. The story has some unexpected twists, with one of the siblings making a surprising decision to return to a place of danger and to regain family through an inexplicable act, while others find ways of surviving and making new lives for themselves in unfamiliar and, later, familiar, places. Throughout the story, the characters wrestle with their past, sometimes finding emotional healing in their work, in education, and in the love not only of humans beings but beloved animals as well. This book offers an unusual take on human darkness and the wake it leaves behind.

[Carole S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buy this book! And then, take the afternoon and evening off, turn off all your devices that ping and submerse yourself inside this compelling story. I don't lose myself in a novel nearly enough, but what a tale. Beautiful and terrifying at once. Gorgeous lines, one after another. Thank you, Susan Miller, for this moving, deeply human novel. Evocative dialogue and imagery. Besides a narrative on how to grow back after civil war and genocide, this is a story of working one's way home, so to speak, after devastating trauma. Miller is not only a masterful writer, but an artist who gives us permission to travel to some other territory beyond love and grief. A Beautiful Land will help you feel more alive.

[Laura Eligator · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engaging blend of fable and stark realism, Susan Miller's A Beautiful Land looks at how one family deals with the brutal political realities that have intruded on a once peaceful and happy life. The reader gets to know the inner lives of the members of the family and roots for each one to heal sufficiently from the violence they have endured to reclaim joy and serenity. The physical and emotional journeys of the characters are compelling and unforgettable.