The last selection of the year for my library book club was a novel called Away by Amy Bloom, which takes place in the 1920s, spanning the globe, from Russia, to New York City, Seattle and Alaska. Lillian Leyb has escaped the Russian pogroms, in which her parents and husband were brutally murdered. She believes her young daughter, Sophie, also died in the attacks, and so when Lillian arrives in the tumultuous society that is New York City in the 1920s, she is a shadow of a woman, surviving but haunted by her past.

But she is also a woman with an iron will. When she learns that her daughter may actually be alive and living in Siberia, Lillian sets off on a quest that will take her across the country and into the frozen Alaskan wilderness. Along the way, she must persevere through acts of violence, abuse, injury, incarceration, and even love.

Although this book measures in at roughly 250 pages, it could easily have been three times that length and still kept me entranced. There are a variety of characters, all with their own subplots, and it would not have been a disservice to the book or the reader for there to be more ink devoted to them. Away is one of those rare books whose sum is greater than its parts, a book that transports the reader to another time, so that the sights, smells, sounds and tastes of another age can be experienced. When I read a book, particularly a historical fiction novel, that’s what I look for, and that’s what Away delivered.