About the Book

Book: The Bright Unknown

Author: Elizabeth Byler Younts

Genre: Historical Romance

Release Date: October 22, 2019

Two young friends embark upon an epic journey across 1940s middle America in search of answers, a family, and a place to call home.

The only kind of life Brighton Turner understands is the one she has endured within the dreary walls of a rural Pennsylvania asylum. A nurse has thoughtfully educated and raised Brighton, but she has also kept vital information from her in order to keep her close. Brighton befriends a boy whom she calls Angel—he doesn’t know his name—and as the two of them learn more about what lies beyond the walls they call home, they fight for their release and eventually escape.

However, the world outside the only place they’ve ever known is not what they expect. They have no real names, no money, and no help—and they must rely upon the kindness of strangers as they walk and hitchhike from Pennsylvania to Michigan to find their last hope of a home.

This heartbreaking journey, narrated in gorgeous prose, explores what it means to belong—and to scour the universe with fresh eyes for the brightness within.

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My Review:

This book is quite an experience. The Riverside Home for the insane, Brighton has grown up there. Born in Riverside, Brighton/Nell has started realizing this isn't the life other people have. Angel is her best and only friend, he's an albino and has poor vision physically, but not poor at all in some other ways.

Nurse Joann has kept her from having a "real" life for far too long, but yet is the only one who has raised and taught her. Her father nor any other relatives are in her life, except her mom, who's illness never seems to get cured. Brighton and Angel are alone in the huge wild world, the world beyond the inside of the asylum. So after 18 years of living with truly crazy people, Brighton and Angel are out on their own.

Who is she? What is she to become? What about Angel? There's so, so, so much to answer and learn! Add to this that this book is told in a "flashback" or "then and now" format it covers things from the 30's to the 90's. We know that Nell is free, but what still chains her to the past and why?

This book is dramatic, gripping, gritty, with well written characters. It will stay with you for a while after the end, and it has a great many twists. The light still shines in the darkness and that theme shines in this book along with such great hope, redemption and friendship.

5 Stars

About the Author

Elizabeth Byler Younts gained a worldwide audience through her first book, Seasons: A Real Story of an Amish Girl. She is also the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Solace of Water and the Promise of Sunrise series. Elizabeth lives in Central Pennsylvania with her husband, her two daughters, and a small menagerie of well-loved pets.

More from Elizabeth

The Bright Unknown was born out of a seed of a true story that my husband’s grandmother, Gigi, shared with me. Gigi told me that when she was a young girl living in Oklahoma her mom had a friend who was a nurse. During one of her visits over coffee she would occasionally talk about her patients at the local asylum. One particular story really intrigued Gigi and even decades later she still remembered it. The story was about a patient who had a baby while at the hospital and while Gigi remembers nothing about the patient or the child, she knew that when she moved out of Oklahoma several years later that asylum-born girl was around eighteen and still living within the walls of that hospital along with her patient-mother.

That story stuck with me. This trapped girl and her mother wouldn’t let me go. I began to wonder over her and ask all sorts of unanswered questions. Slowly but surely my imagined story for her came to life. Layer after layer I learned about Brighton, my name for her. I also named two characters after Gigi, her first and middle, as an honor to her. This story was born from a memory but now these characters feel real and present in my life today and I hope you will journey with them in The Bright Unknown.