• Like The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, The Three Weissmanns of Westport, and A Thousand Acres, The Flight of Gemma Hardy is a modern take on a classic story, one that will delight fans of the original but also stands on its own.

• The House on Fortune Street was a Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, and Entertainment Weekly Best Book of the Year, and received raves from Ann Patchett and Geraldine Brooks. It was also an IndieNext pick.

• Livesey’s background echoes her heroine’s in significant ways: she was estranged from her father and stepmother and was raised by an adopted family, and attended a school for girls in a rural part of Scotland.
 
 

“Margot Livesey’s The Flight of Gemma Hardy is the portrait of a delicate, iron-willed girl, an orphan and a heroine in the grand tradition. The writing is at once wholehearted and razor sharp, but here as in all of Livesey’s novels, the real treasure is her gift for exploring the unreduced human psyche with all its radiant contradictions, mercurial insights, and desperate generosities. Gemma is real—it’s as simple as that. And through her eyes we see step by step what it means to stay determined in the face of the world’s ceaseless ambiguities—what it means, in other words, to take possession of one’s own life.”—David Wroblewski, author of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Fate has not been kind to Gemma Hardy. Orphaned by the age of ten, neglected by a bitter and cruel aunt, sent to a boarding school where she is both servant and student, young Gemma seems destined for a life of hardship and loneliness. Yet her bright spirit burns strong. Fiercely intelligent, singularly determined, Gemma overcomes each challenge and setback, growing stronger and more certain of her path. Now an independent young woman with dreams of the future, she accepts a position as an au pair on the remote and beautiful Orkney Islands.

But Gemma’s biggest trial is about to begin . . . a journey of passion and betrayal, secrets and lies, redemption and discovery that will lead her to a life she’s never dreamed.