I’m happy to be a part of the publicity for Amy’s Story by Anna Lawton. See below to read more about the book, and about Anna Lawton!
About the book:
Amy, full name America, is an Italian native who has managed to create her own American 
dream in New York City. She runs her late American father’s publishing company and has become an established publisher in her own right. Headstrong and inspiring, her success story intertwines with her childhood friend Stella’s story, whose unfinished memoir Amy is editing to get it published. Stella is more reserved and cautious and it is her story that readers follow as she immigrates from Italy to the U.S. Her journey runs parallel to major American historical events ¾ the Vietnam War, student protests and the Kent State shooting, the birth of radicalism and feminism, presidential elections and assassinations, immigration, the Watergate scandal ¾ through career achievements and setbacks, and a heartbreaking love story at its center.
Lawton weaves a beautiful historical narrative, from 1967 to 2011, that features a cast of fascinating characters from Amy and Stella’s lives, including the young, determined immigrant couple in the early 1900s; Marjorie Worthington, Stella’s closest friend and confidant besides Amy; Nik Vozbudin, a passionate and extravagant immigrant professor from Russia; and Jim Welsh, Stella’s lover, who conceals his sensitive nature under a bravado façade.
The memoir never gets published, but a very successful novel takes its place. This twist at the end of the novel will have readers reimagining the entire story and Amy and Stella’s tale will remain with them for a long time.
About Anna Lawton:
I earned my PhD in Russian Literature at UCLA. As a professor, I taught courses in literature, cinema and visual culture at Purdue University and subsequently Georgetown 
University until I retired in 2013. At some point in my career, I took a leave and went to Moscow, where I worked for USIA at the American Embassy as the Deputy Director of Public Information and Media Outreach and the Editor-In-Chief of the magazine Connections. Back in DC, I alternated between teaching and working at the World Bank as the managing editor of the magazine Development Outreach. I also served on the Advisory Film Committee of the National Gallery of Art. Toward the end of my academic career, I ventured into the private sector and founded the publishing house New Academia Publishing, which is today a successful enterprise.
Writing has been an important activity in all my jobs over the years. I am the author of three scholarly books, edited volumes, and numerous articles and essays in academic collections. My book, Imaging Russia 2000: Film and Facts, received the CHOICE Award as Outstanding Academic Title 2005. Then, the time came when I switched to fiction, and my first novel, Family Album, was published in Italy. It will soon come out in the English translation.
Praise for AMY’S STORY
“Lawton’s characters connect to words with dynamic interactions and intellectual alacrity. This author’s voice manages both the interior lives of her characters and the connective tissue of their worlds. Anna Lawton’s mastery of story orchestrates the best out of ‘situation and plot,’ with a full range of motion using the entire emotional alphabet.”
—Grace Cavalieri, Producer/host, “The Poet and the Poem” from the Library of Congress
“From the collapsing towers of 9/11 to the lyrical groves of northern Italy, the author ingeniously morphs Amy’s Story into a journey across America and back and forth across time. Along the way we meet a cohort of colorful characters, witness several romances, and there are wars and politics, too—all woven into a mesmerizing narrative that unspools like a good film. Anna Lawton is not only a scholar of the first rank, but a deft and artful novelist with a flair for the unexpected in her work.”
—Louis Menashe, author of Moscow Believes in Tears: Russians and Their Movies
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