So Far Away

“Solace,” the characters in Moore’s touching second novel (after The Arrivals) find, “can come from unlikely sources.” Widow Kathleen Lynch is lonely and heartbroken, unable to stop ruminating on her missing daughter, who ran away as a teenager. Working at the Massachusetts Archives, Kathleen meets Natalie Gallagher, an awkward, sad 13-year-old. The girl’s parents are separated, her father distant, her mother depressed and emotionally absent, leaving her alone to fend off two relentless cyberbullies, one of whom was her former best friend. Natalie and Kathleen are brought together by Natalie’s research into family history for a school project and the discovery of an old family diary; written in the 1970s, it details the life of an Irish woman in American since 1925 and builds to a gripping secret. Natalie and Kathleen, two people in need, reach out to each other, but it takes lessons learned from the past to help them move forward. This sweet and thoughtful novel is both tense and elegiac, exploring the damage we inflict on ourselves and each other, and the strength it takes to heal. Agent: Elizabeth Weed, Weed Literary. (June)