Ursula, Under

Ingrid Hill is a storyteller. This may seem a clear-cut statement, but once you succumb to the irresistible spell of Ursula, Under -- and you will succumb -- you'll consider redefining the term, or at least putting Ingrid Hill's photo next to it in the dictionary. Storytellers abound in these pages, including a narrator who rides the twin zephyrs of time and space with seductive ease. Imagine a little girl trapped in a mine shaft in contemporary Michigan; imagine a tale that begins by transporting you back to her second-century B.C. Chinese alchemist ancestor, then deftly traces her extraordinary lineage through an intricate system of genealogical tributaries. Imagine accomplishing this feat while remaining firmly grounded in the present. Imagine time as a tightly woven, multicolored cord, and storytellers as the people who understand both the power of that cord as well as the delicacy and beauty of its individual strands. More than you can imagine? Then read Ursula, Under, in which Ingrid Hill has imagined all this for you. She has an amazing story to tell.

One of the most widely praised and rapturously entertaining first novels in recent years begins with a little girl falling down an abandoned mineshaft in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Her name is Ursula Wong, she’s part Chinese, part Finnish, only two years old, and soon the dangerous effort to rescue her has an entire country glued to the TV. As it follows that effort, Ursula, Under re-creates the chain of ancestors, across two thousand years, whose lives culminate in the fragile miracle of a little girl underground: a Chinese alchemist in the third century bc, the orphaned playmate to a seventeenth- century Swedish queen, Ursula's great-great-grandfather who was the casualty of a mining accident that eerily foreshadows Ursula’s dilemma, and many more. A work of symphonic richness and profound empathy, Ursula, Under dramatically demonstrates that no one is truly alone.

[Hill] astounds with her ability to meld simply and beautifully told stories, stories with an air of fable about them. (The Washington Post Book World) It’s a divine view of a family tree... Ride along to the end of this merry, generous book. (Time Out New York) Hill’s stories lure-the characters are vital, clever, detailed, appealing; I wolfed the book down like a bowl of cookie dough. (The San Diego Union-Tribune) Ursula, Under never ceases to surprise and compel. What a grand and daring book. (Brady Udall, author of The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint) Extravagant and absorbing ... I didn’t want it to end. (Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife)

Ingrid Hill is the author of the short story collection Dixie Church Interstate Blues. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa and has twice received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has twelve children, including two sets of twins.

Imprint: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Distributor: Penguin Group USA, Inc
Publication Date: 06-28-2005
Pages: 512
Measurements: 8.00in X 5.44in X 1.08in X 0.91lb