Publisher's Synopsis
Fiction. In the small lake town in Florida where LuLu, Rainey, and Saul are growing up, life is complicated by war, longing, and the sharp pain of conditional love. Coming of age while coming to terms with their detached parents, unrealized dreams, and the backdrop of the war in Vietnam, the threesome push past childhood into their teenage years with the shared baggage of a generation-one that is caught up in the lingering innocence of a private world until outside events cast that world in a different light, and the three measure their days by measuring each other: whether in wit, complicity, or hurtfulness. In the years that they are together, men walk on the moon, students are shot at Kent State, and of their three military fathers, only one returns from Vietnam.
An extraordinary debut novel, SYBELIA DRIVE is a story told through layered, kaleidoscopic images and unforgettable language.
Both sensual and precise, SYBELIA DRIVE tours a reader through a range of times, countries, and points of view to create a lush portrait of friendship and family, loss and fullness.-Aimee Bender
Karin Cecile Davidson has written a keenly-observed novel about the persistence of family ties and friendships, the press of history on private lives, and the tug of both home and away. At once delicate in its prose and bold in its vision, SYBELIA DRIVE is a luminous debut.-Elizabeth Graver
In this brilliantly structured, morally complex novel, Karin Cecile Davidson explores the lives of two girls who have lost their fathers to Vietnam, and of the people around them. I love how well Davidson knows her fierce characters, and how close to the edge she writes. SYBELIA DRIVE is a stunning debut.-Margot Livesey
Karin Cecile Davidson's first novel, SYBELIA DRIVE, is one of the most intricately and inventively constructed works of fiction to come my way in a good while. Davidson knows how to make you turn the pages, and she also knows how to take you inside the lives of her very memorable characters and make you care about their fates. This is a wonderful debut.-Steve Yarbrough
