'A war bride and her granddaughter are on a cruise from San Diego, California to Sydney, Australia. The grandmother, Sarah, was born in Australia and has not returned since she left in 1946, after she married an American serviceman during World War II and travelled to the US after the war on the 'Bride Ship' the USS Mariposa to start life with her new husband. During the journey back to the country of her birth, Sarah tells her granddaughter Hannah the story of her life.
'Hannah - who is the same age Sarah was when she made her first journey - listens avidly, seeing her grandmother for the first time as a woman and a person with a past. Her grandmother gives Hannah new perspective on the stories she has always told herself: that she will never be content with the way she looks, that the desire she feels is ugly and that she doesn't deserve happiness. It is when they arrive at their destination that Hannah realises the immensity of Sarah's life and what she has given up.
'The Passengers is a luminous novel about love: the journeys we undertake in its name, the sacrifices we make and the heartache we sometimes suffer. It is about how we most long for what have left behind. And it is about the past - how close it can still feel - even after long passages of time and when so much has changed.' (Publication summary)
Dedication: In memory of Charlie
Epigraph: Up ahead the's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one. -John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
'Eleanor Limprecht’s new novel explores themes of love, resilience, and courage – the courage to make critical life changes and to endure the loss of what must be left behind.' (Introduction)
'Sarah and her granddaughter Hannah are travelling from San Diego to Australia by cruise liner. It’s a homecoming of sorts, as well as the completing of a circle: Sarah was a war bride who left her family back in Sydney in 1946 to sail to the American husband she barely knew. She hasn’t been back since. American granddaughter Hannah, a student nurse, has left her boyfriend behind and has her own struggles with compulsive exercising and anorexia. She’s filled with self-loathing and as she listens to Sarah tell her life story from her childhood onwards, Hannah begins to see her grandmother, and herself, anew.' (Introduction)
'Sarah and her granddaughter Hannah are travelling from San Diego to Australia by cruise liner. It’s a homecoming of sorts, as well as the completing of a circle: Sarah was a war bride who left her family back in Sydney in 1946 to sail to the American husband she barely knew. She hasn’t been back since. American granddaughter Hannah, a student nurse, has left her boyfriend behind and has her own struggles with compulsive exercising and anorexia. She’s filled with self-loathing and as she listens to Sarah tell her life story from her childhood onwards, Hannah begins to see her grandmother, and herself, anew.' (Introduction)
'Eleanor Limprecht’s new novel explores themes of love, resilience, and courage – the courage to make critical life changes and to endure the loss of what must be left behind.' (Introduction)
