The Dig
A Novel
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
When Sarajevo-born siblings Antonia and Paul join a wealthy Midwestern family in the 1990s, a series of events with deadly consequences is set in motion. Now, with her career on the line and her brother missing, Antonia must race against the clock to confront long-buried family secrets
Antonia King has a complicated relationship with the past. She and her brother were found amid the rubble of a bombed-out apartment in Sarajevo and taken in by a family of contractors in Thebes, Minnesota. Eager to escape the constraints of her adopted town, Antonia embarks on a high-powered legal career. But it isn’t long before her brother’s mysterious disappearance pulls her back home. There, over the course of a single day, Antonia unearths decades of secrets and lies, leading to shocking revelations about her adoptive family—and the sinister truth behind her biological mother’s death—that will alter the course of her life and change her definition of family forever.
Informed by timely issues of immigration, capitalism, and justice, yet timeless in its themes of love, identity, and competing loyalties, The Dig, inspired by the Greek tragedy Antigone, portrays a woman at odds with her history, forced to choose between her own ambitions and her loyalty to her beloved, idealistic brother.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Burt restages Antigone with a story of two Bosnian orphans and their adoptive American family in her inspired debut. Christopher and Eddie King, two American brothers who are in Sarajevo to build hotels when the siege begins in 1993, find Mujo and Andela in the rubble of a bombed-out building. The Kings adopt the children, rename them Paul and Antonia, and take them home to Thebes, Minn. Shortly after, Eddie dies from an opioid overdose. In the children's teen years, Paul becomes estranged from Christopher after dropping out of high school and devoting his life to antiwar activism. Now, in the present, Paul goes missing after protesting a construction project in Thebes spearheaded by Christopher's company, that would displace the local Somalian community, and is wanted by the police for his role in a riot. Christopher, feeling betrayed by Paul, urges Antonia, now a lawyer in the Twin Cities, to convince Paul to turn himself in. Occasionally, Burt's allusions to Sophocles are more clunky than clever (the Bosnian siblings' school in Thebes is named Mount Olympus), but the work's strength lies in the ways Burt complicates her archetypal characters, such as in her portrayal of Antonia's loyalty to Paul. It adds up to an engaging family tragedy.
