Strangers in America: A Novel

Winner of the Great Lakes Novel Prize 2009-2010

STRANGERS IN AMERICA is a fascinating, richly textured novel. Peoples lives can be very different from the inside, the narrator states early on. And that s just where this finely crafted novel brings us inside lives. These lives, however, are no run-of-the-mill, nor indeed are the ways in which they are explored and exposed. They are the lives of people on the edge, anonymous small timers, people who struggle daily against the often overwhelming tide of disadvantage. It is a heroic novel, unflinching in the face of cruelty and exploitation, conspicuously un-preachy and most memorably deeply caring. Erika Meyers is deserving of all the plaudits that will, no doubt, come her way. -James Ryan, author of SEEDS OF DOUBT