Digging Out

by Katherine Leiner

Book Overview

Set against the backdrop of the magnificent Welsh landscape, this is a haunting, inspiring, and heart-lifting novel of loss, family reconciliation, and the healing power of love... When she was eight... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 045121160X
• ISBN13: 9780451211606
• Release Date: March 2004
• Publisher: Berkley
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.5" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Unearthing the past and future

Alys Davies' soul became buried under tons of coal in a Welsh Three Mile Island-type disaster, a historical event rendered brilliantly in Katherine Leiner's debut novel of love, loss, and going home again. Alys' future is hardly more certain than her past. She must face Evan, the man she abandoned for the United States, and confront at last the complex web of family, duty, love, loyalty, and shame. It's no easy task, and Alys seems to have lived a life of denial, at least in pop psychology terms. But the grieving that she experiences over the tearing apart of her family eventually surfaces, layer by layer of loamy Welsh soil, until the hard coal of home truths becomes a diamond of redemption. Leiner's prose sparkles with multiple facets, and her characters are no less dimensional.

Finding Heart

I was deeply moved by Katherine Leiner's debut novel about a woman who ultimately triumphs over fear and loss. As a young girl in Wales Alys Davies is one of a handful of survivors of a tragic accident that claims the lives of hundreds of children. As a mature woman, still burdened by memories, she struggles to live fully, emotionally, with an open heart. I was drawn into Alys's story from the opening pages. The style of the novel, contrasting the lyricism of the Welsh past with the halting struggles toward 'breath' of the present, is particularly effective. I highly recommend this book.

An Excellent Start for a Debut Novelist

In 1966, in Aberfan, Wales, an unthinkable disaster struck: a tip slide devastated the town, burying houses, schools, farms and people. 116 children were killed, creating an intolerable void in the lives of all who inhabited the small mining town. Author Katherine Leiner, a teenager at the time of the tragedy, joined the world in communal grief over the tremendous loss. The real-life story of the disaster haunted Leiner her entire life.Out of that disaster was born the character Alys Davies. Using Aberfan's great misfortune as a backdrop, Leiner wrote DIGGING OUT, a story about Alys Davies, a child who survived being buried by the mudslide, only to find herself buried alive in so many other ways later in life.Alys is one of only a handful of children who are pulled out alive from the mire that covered the town. She struggles for months, even years, after the event to physically and psychologically recover from the loss of her best friend and a large percentage of the town. In the aftermath, the entire community suffers. Her father, held responsible by many of the townsfolk, turns to alcohol to quell his personal demons. Her mother retreats inward, becoming more and more aloof from her children. As neighbors, family and friends try to come to grips with their suffocation, Alys, too, finds her world becoming narrower. One young man, Evan, befriends her, falls in love with her and supports her throughout. He becomes her raison d'etre, and yet, somehow, this isn't enough for her.Alys is the walking wounded and seeks escape as the only means to rise above the emotional muck that is keeping her --- and all those around her --- down. Still a teen, she follows her older sister to the United States, where she eventually marries, starts a family and forges a career as a poet. Thirty years pass and it takes another family tragedy to make Alys realize that changing geography never truly helped her dig out from under her past. And, in fact, she has only managed to bury herself all over again by ignoring the past and even ignoring the truth that is her present. Leiner's language is beautiful and powerful. One cannot help but feel swallowed up from the very beginning by the overwhelming loss experienced by all the main characters. There is an oppression and sadness in Aberfan that Leiner's evocative writing brings right to the surface of the story and maintains throughout all the flashback scenes. And, conversely, when Alys returns home finally to face her parents and the town, the words on the page open up, as if Moses just parted the waters. The release is as refreshing as the mudslide was suffocating. In DIGGING OUT, Leiner reminds us that loss, to whatever degree, is an integral part of life, and to survive it one has to learn how to swim, how to keep one's head above the muddy waters.Leiner's debut novel has me looking forward to reading her future work. Clearly she is an author I want to keep my eye on. I think you will want to too. --- Reviewed by Robe

Just What I Needed....

Not only does Katherine Leiner appeal to a wide audience, but her poetic prose touches not only the literary glutton, but the average reader in search of something magical. Digging Out is a book that not only illustrates life as it REALLY is, but involves the reader with beautiful sentences, each chapter like a prose poem. I strongly recommend this book, because you can't put it down, and it touched me on a deep level. The characters are alive, you KNOW them, they live next door to you. And the traumas in Digging Out, the disastrous pain, the death, the sadness.....we all feel that in everyday life. It is rare these days to find a book with such insight into life, rare to find such poetry in a paperback novel. If you want to be transported into a world you know exists but never imagined yourself in, then read Digging Out!!!

Phenomenal.

Katherine Leiner scores major points on her first novel. All I can say is, Wow. Digging Out achieves its status as both a literary work of art and just a great, captivating-can't-put-it-down read. Every sentence, a poem. Her lyrical construction of prose, similar to writers our kids are studying in school. Leiner manages to bring us into a foreign world, rainy, mysterious Wales, and blow us away with the drama of real life. Digging Out is successful as a novel because you can imagine yourself in the shoes of the protagonist. Alys is every mother, woman, lover, artist in this world. What I enjoyed most about Digging Out, apart from its reliability to please me page after page, was how easily I was transported into Leiner's fabricated world. As a writer, Leiner succeeds tenfold. As a novel, Digging Out is a heroic first. I strongly recommend Digging Out, to someone who wants a fluid, beautiful, dramatic, intense, and lovely read.