TransAtlantic

McCann’s novel centers around three historical crossings from America to Ireland. Between 1845 and 1846, Frederick Douglass tours Ireland and England to promote the abolitionist movement, his autobiography, and to negotiate his freedom so he can safely return to America. In 1919, aviators Jack Alcock and Arthur Brown attempt the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic. And in 1998, Senator George Mitchell leaves for Belfast to negotiate a peace agreement. These three journeys are anchored by four generations of fictional women—from the Irish housemaid interacting with Douglass to Hannah Carson, whose doomed son grows up amid the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Narrator Geraldine Hughes delivers a masterful performance in which she subtly—but effectively—differentiates character voices. Hughes’s narration is most riveting and authentic in the book’s final section, about a woman who has lost her son to violence. A Random House hardcover. (June)