Friday Freebie: The Unmade World by Steve Yarbrough

Congratulations to Tawnya Zorn, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie: The End We Start From by Megan Hunter.

This week, in celebration of the publication of Steve Yarbrough’s new novel The Unmade World, the publisher Unbridled Books is offering up two signed copies of the book. So, we’re doubling your odds of winning this week. Will you be one of the two lucky readers to win The Unmade World? Keep scrolling for more information about the book and how to enter the contest. Good luck!

“This many-layered novel is a thriller, a love story, a travelogue full of richly observed scenes, a morality tale replete with betrayal, remorse and lust for revenge, and a hilarious comedy. The tight control Yarbrough exercises over the ten-year span of the story kept me turning the pages and left me full of admiration.”
–Colm Toibin

Set against a backdrop of the current political and cultural upheaval in the U.S. and Eastern Europe, The Unmade World is a thoughtful literary novel with a dose of suspense that moves from Poland to California to the Hudson Valley and back to Poland. It covers a decade in the lives of an American journalist and a Polish small businessman turned petty criminal and the wrenching aftermath of an accidental, tragic encounter between these two on a snowy night in 2006 on the outskirts of Krakow. The accident costs the lives of the American journalist Richard Brennan’s wife and daughter, an event that colors the rest of his life. It also leads to a downward spiral for Bogdan Baranowsk, leaving emotional scars as he suffers the seemingly inevitable loss of his business, his home, and his wife. The Unmade World is a story of ordinary, otherwise decent people from various backgrounds and circumstances who must learn how to live with the personal grief, sense of guilt, and the emotional consequences of violence. Along the way, the novel grapples with a spectrum of cultural and political issues. It includes a murder mystery wrapped around the corruption of major college sports, the pressures on immigrants and refugees in both the U.S. and Poland, the fallout of political change, economic upheavals and armed conflicts–including the horrific destruction of Luhansk, Ukraine in 2014. It also references the 2016 presidential campaign, cultural politics in the American university, and the demise of print journalism, etc., though never in a dogmatic or overtly partisan way.

If you’d like a chance at winning The Unmade World, simply email your name and mailing address to

thequiveringpen@gmail.com

Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line. Please include your mailing address in the body of the e-mail. One entry per person, please. Despite its name, the Friday Freebie remains open to entries until midnight on Jan. 11, at which time I’ll draw the winning name. I’ll announce the lucky reader on Jan. 12. If you’d like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words “Sign me up for the newsletter” in the body of your email. Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning? Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter. Once you’ve done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying “I’ve shared” and I’ll put your name in the hat twice.