Amanda Eyre Ward’s touching new novel opens with William Stafford’s poem “The Way It Is,” which relates life to a thread: “There’s a thread that you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change…. Nothing you can do can stop time’s unfolding. You don’t ever let go of the thread.” 

With the tone well set by Ward, we meet Carla, a young Honduran girl whose life consists of finding spare rubber at the local dump to trade in for money to help care for her little brother, as well as for herself and her grandmother. Her mother left Honduras years before, bound for Austin, Texas, and the prosperity that America promises. Carla has been living with her grandmother and brother, existing on the meager living they eke out and the money her mother sends home. After her grandmother dies, Carla makes the difficult decision to leave their crime-ridden town before the area gangs engulf her brother, an inevitable fate for the young boys who fall in them, lured by the drugs that help them (at least temporarily) escape their day-to-day lives. Carla sets her sights on finding her mother in Texas, but doesn’t fully realize the arduous journey and the danger they’ll encounter along the way.

"Told in alternating chapters, Ward is able to fully inhabit her characters and their harrowing circumstances on both sides of the border.... In addition to being a moving and engaging read, it seems a natural choice for book groups, with a myriad of interesting topics to discuss."

Alice is a forty-something wife who, along with her husband, Jake, runs one of the most celebrated and storied BBQ restaurants in Austin. Having spent years struggling with infertility, they were all set to adopt a newborn boy. But within a day, the birth mother changed her mind and decided to keep the baby, devastating Alice and Jake. What now? Do they risk this happening again? Do they even have it in them to be parents at this age? Alice struggles with her place in the world. She has only wanted to be a mother, and if she wasn’t, what could fill that void? Through the local school’s principal, Alice is recommended to be the “big sister,” or mentor, to a troubled local girl who’s growing up much too fast. But this type of mothering isn’t what Jake had in mind, and it soon causes friction within their marriage.

Both Carla and Alice are on a journey --- a journey to find themselves and the place where they truly belong. Each struggles with faith, none so heartbreaking as young Carla’s, who has seen the worst side of humanity in her short time on this Earth. Early on, she “believed God watched over me. I was lucky in this. Many people I knew feared that God had forgotten them.” After a couple of horrible events, Carla becomes one of those people. Alice fears she’s been on the baby-track for so long that maybe she’s lost sight of where she should be and what she should be doing with her life. How these two women from different parts of the world, each with her own private obstacles, come together to help one another is the nimble crux of this very heartfelt story.

As she has in her previous novels, Amanda Eyre Ward deftly illuminates the stories of these two very different women and the journeys they undertake in order to find their true selves --- and their true homes. Told in alternating chapters, Ward is able to fully inhabit her characters and their harrowing circumstances on both sides of the border. The topic of immigration and issues of violence in border towns are very much in the news these days. Ward shines a light on the difficult journey a young woman takes in order to make it to the U.S., where she hopes to find the promised land. The subjects of infertility and adoption are also not far from the headlines; she delves into these barbed issues and how Alice tries to navigate the world. In addition to being a moving and engaging read, it seems a natural choice for book groups, with a myriad of interesting topics to discuss.

After reading THE SAME SKY, you just might view the world a little differently. And isn’t that the goal of all great art?