Amy Poeppel's warm, hilarious fifth novel, Far and Away, explores the vagaries of culture shock, the complexities of family, and the meaning of home through the lens of a Dallas-Berlin house swap.
Texan interior designer Lucy is solo parenting her three kids while her husband, Mason, is away on a not-so-secret NASA mission. Art collector Greta has just achieved the triumph of her career: a Vermeer to crown a collection focused on portraits of women. But when Lucy's math-geek son, Jack, makes a disastrous mistake, and Greta's husband, Otto, takes a job in Dallas, the two women connect online and agree to switch houses for the summer--with highly entertaining consequences.
Poeppel (The Sweet Spot) plunges her characters into one another's worlds. Lucy navigates Berlin with her rusty German and tries to keep her twin girls from destroying Greta's elegant Berlin flat. Meanwhile, Greta struggles to understand Texas--and Texans--while keeping an eye on her college-aged daughter in New York, and Otto delights in barbecue and Costco. As both women adjust to unfamiliar places, they're also forced to examine their snap judgments about each other and face difficult truths about the lives they've temporarily left behind. The summer brings a few unexpected twists that leave Lucy and Greta unexpectedly relying on each other for advice and connection, as their relationship morphs from chilly distance to grudging respect and then true warmth. Poeppel's narrative whisks readers back and forth across the Atlantic, providing a fast-paced adventure filled with humor, homesickness, and heart. Far and Away is a testament to the power of friendship--no matter where or how it appears. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams