A powerful and thought-provoking novel about family, friendship and the risks we take to unravel the truth

When three old friends find themselves back in their hometown, their thoughts inevitably turn to the past. Twenty years ago, Joe was shot dead in the bedroom of his white girlfriend, Aggie. It was deemed an accident, but now Cassie – a journalist – is not so sure. As racial tension ignites a string of violence across their New England city, secrets are revealed, questions mount and suspicions grow. Will the answers that they are so desperate to find cause everyone’s world to shatter?

The Same Country unearths long-buried truths that remain the truths of America’  Gish Jen

‘Complications of race and class make for a deeply compelling novel’ – Margot Livesey

Praise for THE SAME COUNTRY

‘History appears to be repeating itself in this astute, powerful and pacey novel about race, secrets, and whether it's ever good to return to old haunts.’
CLAIRE FULLER, winner of the 2021 Costa Novel Prize
‘A romance, a detective story, and a coming-of-age novel all at once.’
GENE SEYMOUR, 2016 Kirkus Novel Prize judge
‘An intimate, intricate history of violence, race, community and love. What a thrilling debut novel.’
TOBY LITT, author of A Writer’s Diary and a Granta Best Young British Novelist
‘This is subtly compelling story telling, as alert as poetry to the power of the unsaid’.
PHILIP GROSS, T.S. Eliot Prize-winning poet
‘The heart thrums with each sentence—a truly thrilling read.’
ERIC NGALLE CHARLES, author of Homeland and I, Eric Ngalle
'A small-town America story of love and reverberating tragedy, with an interior voice that rivals Virginia Woolf's.’
PHILIP HOARE, author of Leviathan, and Albert & the Whale
"A searing and timely portrait of America today.
DONNA HEMANS, author of Tea by the Sea
‘Both a page-turner and an issues-driven exposé of twenty-first century society, 'The Same Country' is an important and astonishing book.
CHARLIE CARROLL, author of The Lip
‘A probing, disturbing and gripping look at race, class and privilege in the U.S.’
REBECCA SMITH, author of The Ash Museum

Carole Burns is an award-winning American writer and journalist living in the U.K.  The Same Country is her debut novel.

A freelance writer for the Washington Post’s Book World, Carole was awarded the 2015 John C. Zacharis prize by the U.S. literary magazine Ploughshares for her collection, The Missing Woman and Other Stories. American Book Review described the stories as “a precise, almost clinical look at the emotional landscape of womanhood in the contemporary world.”

Sign up for Carole’s newsletter, On and Off the Page

Carole regularly interviews other writers, and her book Off the Page: Writers Talk About Beginnings, Endings, and Everything in Between, published by W.W. Norton, was based on interviews with forty-three authors including Edward P. Jones, Colm Tóibín, Anthony Doerr and Jhumpa Lahiri. She continues interviewing writers both as a journalist and as founder of “Writers in Conversation,” the reading series she runs at the University of Southampton in the UK, where she teaches creative writing as associate professor of English. 

© Chris Passehl

Events

Wed 13 September, London:  Launch Party at Waterstones Leadenhall Market, 6:30-8:30 pm

Thur 28 September, Winchester: P&G Wells, Reading by Carole then q-and-a with novelist Judith Heneghan, 7 pm 

Sat 30 September, Swansea: Talk and signing at Cover to Cover, Mumbles, 2 pm 

Thursday 19 October, Pontypridd: Reading with other writers at VoicesOntheBridge, Clwb Y Bont, 7:45 pm.

Thur 2 November, Southampton: October Books, Reading by Carole with q-and-a led by Rebecca Smith, 6:30 pm 

Scroll to Top