My New American Life Prose, Francine Fiction
	On Sale Date:	04/26/2011
	Imprint:	Harper
	Print Run:	50,000
	Format:	Hardcover
		320 pgs.
	Price:	$25.99
	ISBN:	0061713767
	ISBN 13:	9780061713767
	Other Formats
	AUD	9780062072863

An Albanian living surreptitiously in New York City on an expiring tourist visa, twenty-six year old Lula hopes to make a better life for herself in America. When she lands a job as caretaker to Zach, a rebellious high school senior in suburban New Jersey, it seems that the security, comfort, and happiness of the American dream might finally be within reach. Her new boss, Mister Stanley, an idealistic college professor turned Wall Street executive, assumes that Lula is a destitute refugee of Balkan wars. He enlists his childhood friend, Don Settebello, a hotshot lawyer who prides himself on defending political underdogs to straighten out Lula’s legal situation. Set in the aftermath of 9/11, My New American Life offers a vivid, darkly humorous, bitingly real portrait of a particular moment in history, when a nation’s dreams and ideals gave way to a culture of cynicism, lies and fear. Beneath its high comic surface, the novel is a more serious consideration of immigration, of what it was like to live through the Bush-Cheney years, and of what it means to be American.