Into Thin Air [Hardcover]

Caroline Leavitt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 29, 1994

Hours after giving birth, a young woman flees her baby and her husband and slips into a new life. With rare insight and compassion, Caroline Leavitt shows us the impact of that flight through the eyes of the husband and child left behind.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Toting road maps marked with favored routes, Lee often wanders along highway shoulders, a habit she fell into after her mother died of cancer and her father and his new wife locked this surly, seductive woman-child out of their hearts. At 17, she elopes from Philadelphia with Jim Archer, the blandest boy she knows. Their first night together, Lee is sure she'll "never sleep with him lying so close beside her, staking so much claim." Mired in a stifling marriage, she has a daughter, whom she abandons at a Baltimore hospital in order to skip from state to state, fleeing her old life and searching for a new one. Her brittle shell finally cracks when a friend adopts an equally restless, frantically resentful four-year-old; Lee begins to search again, this time for the child she left behind. Leavitt ( Meeting Rozzy Halfway ) builds tension with a neatly contrapuntal narrative. Alternately viewing the world through Lee's eyes and through Jim's, she skillfully renders two realistically different accounts of an abortive relationship--one stark and unyielding, the other made more palatable by comforting lies. The melancholy story that ensues engages the reader with its essential truths, but remains largely superficial in that its unhappy endings are not only inevitable, but predictable.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Lee has been running all her life: first with her beloved athletic mother, then from home after her mother's death and her father's remarriage. Eventually Lee elopes with Jim Archer, a young pharmacy student. After giving birth to a girl, Lee runs away again, this time from the hospital. The novel follows the parallel lives of Jim in Baltimore as he struggles to rebuild his shattered life, and Lee as she finally lets herself put down roots in Madison, Wisconsin. Nine years after her disappearance, Lee's involvement in the life of a friend's adopted daughter makes her long for her own. Her reappearance in the lives of Jim, their daughter, and his new wife has powerful implications for all of them. While somewhat slow to start, this novel by the author of Lifelines ( LJ 5/15/82) and Meeting Rozzy Halfway ( LJ 1/15/81) ultimately involves the reader when it begins tracing Lee's growth. Not an essential purchase, but this will find an audience.
- Janet Boyarin Blundell, MLS, Brookdale Community Coll., Lincroft, N.J.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Random House Value Publishing (May 29, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517125684
• ISBN-13: 978-0517125687
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,776,797 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm the New York Times Bestselling author of Pictures of You, and the award-winning author of eight other novels. Pictures of You was a Costco "Pennie's Pick," a San Francisco Chronicle Lit Pick, and it was also on many Best of 2011 lists, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Providence Journal, Bookmarks Magazine, and Kirkus Reviews, which also put the novel on their Top Five Novels about Family and Love list. I've been writing since I was in grade school (I was the one who made up books and then wrote book reports for them.) I always knew I wanted to be a writer, though being a screenwriter came in a close second. I live for books and the movies and I teach writing at UCLA online, have private clients, and I'm a book critic for People and the Boston Globe. I'm deliriously happily married to the writer Jeff Tamarkin (his book, Got A Revolution: The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane, was one of the top music books of the year) and we have a teenaged son.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A novel that holds you -- and won't let you go., December 6, 1999

By 

Abby Mendelson (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Into Thin Air (Hardcover)

Into Thin Air, Caroline Leavitt's fifth novel, is a finely honed treatise on grief and loss, commitment and abandonment. Clearly, this is an author who has suffered -- and who is brave enough to share both the pain and the inevitable healing. From the first page, this is a novel that holds you -- and won't let you go.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful read!, June 11, 2008

By 

Yolanda S. Bean (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Into Thin Air (Hardcover)

I loved this book! I read Girls In Trouble first and was excited to find this title in a used book store. Caroline Leavitt is a very talented writer, and my main complaint is, I don't know where to find her books in stores! I do definitely want to read them all though, as the three that I have read, I have entirely enjoyed!
This book shared some similar themes with Girls In Trouble, and was also an addictingly good read with solid characters and plot and a satisfying ending.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good read, January 30, 2001

By 

S Lamy - See all my reviews

This review is from: Into Thin Air (Hardcover)

Caroline Leavitt did a great job with this story. The characters were interesting and you care about what happens to them. Good plot and a great read. I enjoyed it very much and am looking forward to her next novel.