From actor, director, and best-selling travel writer Andrew McCarthy comes a novel about family secrets, the limits of forgiveness, and finding one’s way in the world.
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An award-winning travel writer, a New York Times bestselling author (The Longest Way Home), a renowned television director (Orange is the New Black and The Blacklist), and of course, an actor in iconic coming-of-age films (Pretty in Pink, St. Elmo’s Fire, Less Than Zero, etc.), Andrew McCarthy now turns to young adult fiction with his debut novel, JUST FLY AWAY.
When fifteen-year-old Lucy Willows discovers she has an eight-year-old brother living just a few blocks away – the result of her father’s brief affair – she begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her life. How could Lucy’s father have betrayed the entire family? How could her mother forgive him? And why isn’t her sister rocked by the news the way Lucy is?
Her father’s secret becomes her own and isolates Lucy from her friends and family. Telling no one—with little cash in her pocket, no plan, and not even a change of clothes—Lucy vanishes from home and hits the road looking for answers, determined to get to the bottom of her family’s habits of lies and secrets.
McCarthy, an editor at large for National Geographic Traveler magazine whose work has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic, was traveling for a writing assignment when Lucy’s voice came to him. Like her creator, Lucy is a thinker and a seeker whose journey takes her from her backyard picnic table on a road trip through New York and Boston and past the lobster shacks along the rocky coast of Maine. “Lucy is going to be a great adult,” McCarthy says, “She just has to get there.”
“Andrew McCarthy narrates JUST FLY AWAY with the confidence of a seasoned storyteller,” says Jennifer Armstrong of Northshire Books. And Rachel Strolle of Anderson’s Bookshop hails JUST FLY AWAY as “a great new story from a voice that may be new to the YA world, but a voice that we have held in our hearts for years.” With Lucy’s story, McCarthy establishes himself as a sharp, observant new voice in young adult fiction.
Andrew McCarthy is a director, an award winning travel writer, and—of course—an actor. He made his professional debut at nineteen in Class, and has appeared in dozens of films, including such iconic movies as Pretty in Pink, St. Elmo’s Fire, Less Then Zero, and cult favorites Weekend At Bernie’s and Mannequin.
He has starred on Broadway and on television. McCarthy is also a highly regarded television director whose credits include Orange is the New Black, The Blacklist, and many others.
Simultaneously, McCarthy is an award winning travel writer. He is an editor-at-large at National Geographic Traveler and has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Travel+Leisure, AFAR, Men’s Journal, Bon Appetit, and many others. He has received six Lowell Thomas awards, and been named Travel Journalist of the Year by The Society of American Travel Writers.
His travel memoir, The Longest Way Home, became a New York Times Best Seller, and the Financial Times of London named it one of the Best Books of the year. He served as guest editor for the prestigious Best American Travel series in 2015. JUST FLY AWAY is his first novel.
