Amy Jo Burns’ Wait for Me is the latest selection for Read With Jenna, Jenna Bush Hager’s Today show book club.
Burns’ novel, scheduled for publication next Tuesday by Celadon, follows Marijohn Shaw, an 18-year-old woman in Appalachia who was left outside a gas station as a baby and raised by its owner. She connects with Elle Harlow, a country singer-songwriter who disappeared years before after performing at the Grand Ole Opry. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “Two women learn that music and friendship can bloom from loss and hard times.”
Hager announced the novel’s selection on the Today show, saying, “It is as beautiful and lyrical as where it takes place, in Appalachia.…It’s an emotional mystery about music, legacy, loss, and love, and the power of memory. I loved this book. It’s so beautiful.”
Burns told Today.com that she learned that her book had been selected for the club while waiting with her children at a school bus stop.
“It felt really perfect to me, because I used to think that the only way you could become a writer was that you would go off into the woods for months at a time, until you had an epiphany, and then you wrote this book and came back,” she said. “My life has never been that way. My life has always been writing in the context of building a life and building a family. So the fact that my kids were there, even though I couldn’t tell them, it just felt very earned and perfect.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
