Transatlantic

A Globe & Mail 100 Selection

"One story is all stories," says Colum McCann, author of the award-winning Let the Great World Spin

In his remarkable new novel, Colum McCann masterfully reaches across the centuries to braid together three unforgettable stories. In 1845, Frederick Douglass, a black American slave, lands in Ireland to champion ideas of democracy and freedom, only to find a famine unfurling around him. In 1919, two brave young airmen emerge from the carnage of World War I to pilot the first transatlantic flight from St. John's, Newfoundland, to the west of Ireland. And in 1998 an American senator criss-crosses the ocean in search of a lasting peace in Ireland.

Taking these stories as his point of departure, Colum McCann weaves together the lives of Douglass, Alcock and Brown and Senator George Mitchell in a tapestry that is both ambitious and unforgettable.