About the Book
Laura: a teenage girl struggling to fit into her small, sleepy town in upstate New York, slowly drifting away from reality and into the secret life she inhabits online. Paul: a twentysomething wannabe rock star, back home from New York City, broke and jobless, living with his mother. April: a math teacher with two kids, running her church's vacation Bible school, discontent with another summer planning crafts and regurgitating verses. Ben: a boy stuck at VBS, still adjusting to the presence of his foster brother, DeShawn, a quiet, brooding kid from Brooklyn.
Over the course of one summer, these characters' paths will collide in surprising, often hilarious ways. Encompassing questions of identity, religion, race, and family, Another Life is an absorbing and thought-provoking debut about the line we all walk between desire and responsibility.
About the Author :
Robert Haller holds an MFA in fiction from the New School in New York City. He lives in upstate New York. Another Life is his first novel.
Eileen Stevens is a voice-over actress whose voice can be heard on cartoons, promos, programs for English-language learners, and audiobooks. An Earphones Award-winning narrator, she is also an audiobook director and producer.
Andrew Eiden is an actor and winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award for narration. He has been acting since the age of four, working at regional theaters, in national commercials, and on numerous television shows.
SUZIE ALTHENS records from her professional studio in Alaska, near the beautiful Matanuska Glacier. She narrates regularly for major publishers and specializes in audiobooks and e-learning. Suzie is enthusiastic about narrating nonfiction as it provides opportunities to share amazing memoirs, medical discoveries, and inspiration, but she also enjoys mysteries and women's fiction. Suzie narrates children's encyclopedias and donates time to narrate children's fiction for Learning Ally, a nonprofit organization, when she has the opening to woo the reluctant young reader.
Michael Crouch is an actor based in New York City. His audiobook narration has won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration, numerous Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine, and Best of the Year accolades from Booklist, School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly. He can also be heard on national commercials, cartoons, video games, and the animé series Pokémon XY and Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V.
Review :
"The novel is told through shifting perspectives, set around Vacation Bible Camp...They are striving towards righteousness, but finding that the mark set by the church may always be unattainable. When choosing between hell and grace, being human seems like its own sin. It is through discovering the distance between that they allow themselves to evolve."
-- "Seattle Book Review"
"A fresh voice meets an old soul in Robert Haller, whose Another Life won me over completely with its dark humor, refined earnestness, and uncommon wisdom. Each page is its own thrilling announcement that a new literary writer is on the scene."
-- "Christopher Castellani, author of Leading Men"
"A sweet, fresh look at the growing pains of a conservative church community."
-- "Booklist"
"Haller's debut is a fast-moving ensemble story of an emotionally turbulent summer in a small town...Haller's engaging story skillfully portrays how different generations grapple with faith, as well as the temptations of substance use and sexual exploration."
-- "Publishers Weekly"
"Keenly observed and gracefully written, Another Life captures teenaged life in all its restless, grasping, blessed turmoil. Robert Haller's debut novel is set in the hothouse of a small religious community where the adults roil, too. Haller has the precocious wisdom to know that the grown-ups are only older, more wrinkled versions of their kids, human and divine."
-- "Helen Schulman, New York Times bestselling author of Come with Me and This Beautiful Life"
"With Another Life, Robert Haller joins the first rank of younger novelists. His story circles around a group of characters all members of a church in upstate New York. There is the wild minister's daughter, the single mother trying to keep it together, the former rock star back home from a failed attempt to launch in New York City. Each story line is precise and soulful. Haller understands that our search for greater meaning and connection cannot be contained in a church building alone, or by a single set of doctrines. Family, race, love, God: Haller has original compelling ideas about all of them. I fell in love with this book; its humor, its many beautiful lines, its big, big heart."
-- "Darcey Steinke, author of Flash Count Diary"
