Jake is a New York City fireman and devoted family man. Eric is climbing the corporate ladder at the expense of his wife and children. On a fateful Tuesday in September, two strangers meet for a startling moment in a smoke-filled stairway. Only one will leave the Twin Towers alive. Will he find his way home?

The last thing Jake Bryan knew was the roar of the World Trade Center collapsing on top of him and his fellow firefighters.

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Five years after a little girl lures a reclusive woman out of her isolation, forcing her to once again embrace love, the events of September 11 forever change both of their lives in unexpected and dramatic ways.

"In this dual-narrative tale, a teenage American army private and an Afghan boy living under the horrors of the Taliban, caught on separate sides of the world during the tumultuous times leading up to and following 9/11, come to discover how much more they have in common than they ever could have imagined"--

"A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home. Ayad Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a country in which debt has ruined countless...

"It's 2 AM on a Saturday night in the spring of 2001, and twenty-eight-year old Cecily Gardner sits alone in a dive bar on New York's Lower East Side, questioning her life. Feeling lonesome and homesick for the Midwest, she wonders if she'll ever make it as a reporter in the big city--and whether she made a terrible mistake in breaking up with her longtime boyfriend Matthew. As Cecily reaches for the phone to call him, she hears a guy on the barstool...

Three years have passed since the terrorist attacks on New York City. Jamie Bryan, widow of a firefighter who lost his life on that terrible day, has found meaning in her season of loss by volunteering at St. Paul's, the memorial chapel across the street from where the Twin Towers once stood. Here she meets a daily stream of people touched by the tragedy, including two men with whom she feels a connection. One is a firefighter also changed by the...

"It's 2 AM on a Saturday night in the spring of 2001, and twenty-eight-year old Cecily Gardner sits alone in a dive bar on New York's Lower East Side, questioning her life. Feeling lonesome and homesick for the Midwest, she wonders if she'll ever make it as a reporter in the big city - and whether she made a terrible mistake in breaking up with her longtime boyfriend Matthew. As Cecily reaches for the phone to call him, she hears a guy on the barstool...