Guide Note

Anne Tyler's Digging to America is a fictional story about a friendship between two couples who adopt daughters from Korea. The novel addresses issues of class, race, immigration and multiculturalism.

Fast Facts

1. Author: Anne Tyler
2. Genre: Fiction
3. Publication Date: May 2, 2006
4. Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
5. Pages: 277
6. ISBN 9780345492340
7. Setting: Present day United States
8. Questions the nature of "True American Identity"
9. Tyler's seventeenth novel

Digging to America follows two families: the native born Donaldsons and the Yazdans (a family that consists of an Americanized husband, his Iranian wife and his more traditional mother). Both families meet at a Baltimore airport while waiting for their adopted Korean children to arrive. After becoming friends, the two families set a yearly tradition to throw a party in celebration of the arrival of the children. The story follows the relationship of the two households and the evolution of cultural and moral values of each of the members as they interact and bond with one another.

• "Readers will hope that these flawed, lovable people will find happiness, but they won't be sure until the final page, so deftly has the author balanced the forces that keep us apart against those that bring us together." - Kirkus Reviews

• "It looks at the promises and perils of the American Dream and the knotty, layered relationship — made up in equal parts of envy, admiration, resentment and plain befuddlement — that can develop between native-born Americans and more recent immigrants intent on making their way through the often baffling byways of the New World." - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times