From the acclaimed author of 'How to Be Lost' comes a powerful new novel about love, memory, and motherhood. Restless and driven, journalist Nadine Morgan is always on the move, chasing the next big story, following risky leads and running from anything that might weigh her down. Ten years after an assignment in South Africa ended in tragedy, she has not been back to the beautiful, troubled country that launched her career -- and broke her heart. But when a young man from her hometown is beaten to death by an angry mob in Cape Town, she is flooded with memories of a time when the pull toward adventure left her grief-stricken and haunted. When the boy's murderers apply for amnesty under Nelson Mandela's new regime, his parents pack their bags, determined to fight the killers' plea for forgiveness. Desperate to escape the bonds of affection and guilt that threaten to tie her to her hometown, Nadine heads after them to cover the trial. In a land struggling to heal scars left by years of hatred, Nadine grows close to the mothers of both the dead boy and his killer, with profound consequences. Alone in a country both foreign and familiar, and surrounded by ghosts from her past, Nadine must face the demons she has tried so desperately to bury and learn what it means to love -- and to forgive. Gripping, darkly humorous and luminously written, 'Forgive Me' is an unforgettable story of ambition and longing, regret and redemption
ABOUT AMANDA
Amanda Eyre Ward was born in New York City in 1972. Her family moved to Rye, New York when she was four. Amanda attended Kent School in Kent, CT, where she wrote for the Kent News.
Amanda majored in English and American Studies at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She studied fiction writing with Jim Shepard and spent her junior fall in coastal Kenya. She worked part-time at the Williamstown Public Library. After graduation, Amanda taught at Athens College in Greece for a year, and then moved to Missoula, Montana.
Amanda studied fiction writing at the University of Montana with Bill Kittredge, Dierdre McNamer, Debra Earling, and Kevin Canty, receiving her MFA. After traveling to Egypt, she took a job at the University of Montana Mansfield Library, working in Inter Library Loan.
In 1998, Amanda moved to Austin, Texas where she began working on Sleep Toward Heaven. She wrote for the Austin Chronicle and worked for a variety of Internet startups. In 1999, Amanda won third prize in the Austin Chronicle short story contest with her story Miss Montana's Wedding Day.
She published Butte as in Beautiful that same year.
In July, 2000, Amanda married the geologist Tip Meckel in Ouray, Colorado.
They spent a summer in New Orleans, Louisiana, where Amanda wrote the short stories The Beginning of the Wrong Novel and Classified.
During that summer, Amanda finished Sleep Toward Heaven, which was published in 2003. Sleep Toward Heaven won the Violet Crown Book Award and was optioned for film by Sandra Bullock and Fox Searchlight. To promote Sleep Toward Heaven, Amanda, her baby, and her mother Mary-Anne Westley traveled to London and Paris.
Amanda moved to Waterville, Maine, where she wrote in an attic filled with books. Amanda's second novel, How to Be Lost, was published in 2004. How to Be Lost was selected as a Target Bookmarked pick, and has been published in fifteen countries.
After one year in Maine and two years on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Amanda and her family returned to Austin, Texas.
To research her third novel, Forgive Me, Amanda traveled with her sister, Liza Ward Bennigson, to Cape Town, South Africa. Forgive Me was published in 2007.
Amanda's short story collection, Love Stories in This Town, was published in April, 2009.
Her new novel, Close Your Eyes, will be published in July, 2011.
Amanda currently writes every morning and spends afternoons with her two young boys.
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