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Legend Press has snapped up The Same Country, the "thought-provoking" début novel exploring race, class and complicity from Carole Burns.
Commissioning editor Cari Rosen acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, but including audio from Anna Carmichael at Abner Stein. The novel will be published on 29th August 2023.
The Same Country follows three women who are haunted by the shooting of their friend and brother, Joe Willis. The novel was inspired from Burns’ work as a newspaper reporter in Connecticut and her reflections on America as an expat: "I moved to the UK some years ago, and after the BBC reports on yet another white cop shooting dead another Black person in another American city, I am sometimes asked to explain my country. I can’t. All I’ve begun to understand is that this particular mix of violence and racism and ignoring of the obvious is somehow, inherently, American. As a novelist, how could I not write about that?"
The Same Country synopsis reads: "Twenty years ago, Joe was shot dead in the bedroom of his white girlfriend. It was deemed an accident, but now his friend Cassie – a journalist – is not so sure. As racial tension ignites a string of violence across their New England city, secrets are revealed, questions mount and suspicions grow. Will the answers that she is so desperate to find cause everyone’s world to shatter?"
Rosen added: "While The Same Country, in this instance, is set in the US, this is a universal story of how both racism and gun crime affects society as a whole and the individuals within."