Laura McBride is a writer and community college teacher in Las Vegas, Nevada. She says that she appreciates the beautiful and explosive possibilities of her home town: a community in which the conventional and social boundaries are unusually fluid, and where she has witnessed the power of second chances.
In McBride’s debut novel “We Are Called To Rise,” far from the neon lights of the Vegas strip, lives are about to collide. A middle-aged woman attempting to revive her marriage. A returning soldier waking up in a hospital bed with no memory of how he got there. A very brave eight-year-old immigrant boy. Three lives are bound together by a split-second mistake, and a child’s fate hangs in the balance.
“We Are Called to Rise” is a story about families—the ones we have and the ones we make. It’s a story about America today, where so many cultures and points of view collide and coexist, showing what happens when the protective borders of our lives are suddenly smashed and how ordinary strangers can rise to the extraordinary challenge of caring for each other.
Laura McBride’s “We Are Called to Rise” (Simon & Schuster 2014) was a #1 Indie Next pick and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writer's choice in the United States, and both a Simon Mayo BBC Radio 2 Book Club selection and a Waterstones Book Club pick in the UK. McBride teaches composition and literature at the College of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas.
