The Air We Breathe: A Novel
About this audiobook
In the autumn of 1916, Americans are debating whether to enter the First World War. There are “preparedness parades,” and headlines report German spies. But in an isolated community in the Adirondacks in upstate New York, the danger is barely felt. At Tamarack Lake the focus is on the sick. Wealthy tubercular patients live in private cure cottages; charity patients, many of them recent immigrants from Europe, fill the sanatorium.
Here, in the crisp air, time stands still. Prisoners of routine and yearning for absent families, the inmates, including the newly arrived Leo Marburg, take solace in gossip, rumor, and secret attachments.
An enterprising patient initiates a weekly discussion group. When his well-meaning efforts lead instead to tragedy and betrayal, the war comes home, bringing with it a surge of anti-immigrant prejudice and vigilante sentiment. Andrea Barrett pits power and privilege against unrest and thwarted desire, in a spellbinding tale of individual lives in a nation on the verge of extraordinary change.
About the author
Andrea Barrett is the author of nine previous works of fiction, including the National Book Award–winning Ship Fever and Pulitzer Prize finalist Servants of the Map. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an NEA Fellowship, as well as a finalist for the Story Prize and a recipient of the Rea Award for the Short Story.
Jeff Woodman is the winner of multiple Earphones Awards, and he was named the 2008 Best Voice in Fiction & Classics as well as one of the “Fifty Greatest Voices of the Century” by AudioFile magazine. His credits include Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, The Life of Pi, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Some of his non-fiction works include Dr. Perricone's 7 Secrets to Beauty, Health and Longevity and The Intellectual Devotional: American History. On stage, Woodman starred in the title role in Tennessee William's The Notebook of Trigorin, and he received the S.F. Bay Area Critic's Circle Award for his performance in An Ideal Husband. Woodman has also participated in numerous ESL programs and cartoon voices for Japanese animation.
