Jonathan Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Now, with humor, tenderness, and awe, he confronts the traumas of our recent history. What he discovers is solace in that most human quality, imagination. Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist, correspondent with Stephen Hawking and Ringo Starr. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York. His mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. An inspired innocent, Oskar is alternately endearing, exasperating, and hilarious as he careens from Central Park to Coney Island to Harlem on his search. Along the way he is always dreaming up inventions to keep those he loves safe from harm.
The Promise was inspired by a dilapidated house on Galveston’s West End and by an interview Ann conducted when she was a freelance writer for The Islander, a Galveston magazine. She wrote the novel to remember the dairy farmers, cattle ranchers, fishermen, and their families who lived on the rural part of the island at the time of the historic 1900 hurricane. Their stories have been overlooked in most accounts about the storm, and The Promise is Ann’s effort to give voice to the forgotten. 
