In America

The novel opens with an unnamed first-person narrator who crashes a dinner party at a hotel in a Polish city in December 1875. Shivering by the tile stove, she eavesdrops on guests who speak a language she does not know but somehow understands. She identifies a compelling woman with ash-blond hair whom she calls Maryna, a bearded man she designates as Maryna's husband, Bogdan, and a burly young man with glasses she names Ryszard. Through fragments of heated conversation, the narrator deduces that Maryna is a famous actress contemplating some reckless departure. The narrator, whose four grandparents were born in Poland, resolves to follow these people out into the world.

The story shifts to Maryna's perspective. On the evening of the party, she receives a slap from her jealous rival, Gabriela Ebert, before performing in Mary Stuart. Rather than being devastated, Maryna privately cherishes the slap as an emblem of the dissatisfaction crystallizing within her. The thrill of acting has deserted her: Mid-performance, she feels no more than herself. Through visits with her doctor friend Henryk Tyszyński and a letter she writes to herself, Maryna's tangled motives emerge. Her brother Stefan is dying. She feels guilt about her seven-year-old son, Piotr. The applause that once sustained her now feels hollow, and she has had a nervous breakdown that kept her off the stage for three months. Police surveillance, a remnant of Poland's partition among Russia, Austria, and Prussia, shadows her every move. She tells Henryk she will die if she does not do something "reckless" and "grand."

Maryna's backstory reveals the arc of her ambitions. The youngest of 10 children, she married a man named Heinrich Załęźowski at 16; he launched her stage career in provincial Poland. Her infant daughter died of diphtheria while she was away on tour. She rose to become the leading actress at the Imperial Theatre in Warsaw. She later married Bogdan Dembowski, whose family owns a country estate.

In May 1876, Maryna cancels her engagements and retreats with Bogdan, Piotr, and friends to the mountain village of Zakopane in the Tatras, Poland's southern highlands. For five summers they have lived simply in this remote village, calling their communal arrangement "our phalanstery," after the ideal communities envisioned by the French utopian philosopher Charles Fourier. Now the gathering has a more urgent purpose: to plan their emigration to America. Henryk, who declines to join the venture, warns Maryna against confounding a spartan house party with a genuine utopian community. Before departing, Maryna holds her dying brother Stefan, who dies in her arms. Bogdan visits his brother Ignacy to request his share of family income, and the couple says farewell to Bogdan's elderly grandmother, who gives them an atheist's blessing and the advice not to invent too many reasons for what they have decided to do.

Ryszard and the schoolmaster Julian Solski travel ahead as scouts, crossing the Atlantic on the S.S. Germanic. Julian is incapacitated by seasickness, freeing Ryszard to pursue his own transformation: studying English, filling his notebook with observations, and descending twice into steerage to witness the squalid conditions of 1,500 emigrants. They arrive in New York, where Ryszard experiences an epiphany on Broadway as the mythical America becomes stunningly real, then depart by train for California.

Maryna's long letter to Henryk chronicles the main group's journey: the wrenching farewell at the Warsaw railway station, a confrontation with her former husband Heinrich in Bremen, and a harrowing Atlantic crossing on the Donau during which a young passenger disappears overboard. She confesses to being haunted by the lure of the sea until the young man's death brings her to her senses. The group crosses the Isthmus of Panama by train and sails up the Pacific coast.

They arrive at a rented farm outside Anaheim, California, in October 1876. Daily routines emerge: the women cook and clean, the men tend the vineyard, and Ryszard slips love notes into Maryna's apron pocket. Bogdan studies viticulture and signs the deed of purchase in December for $4,000. The community gradually fractures. Piotr insists on being called Peter. Bogdan's private diary entries reveal his suppressed desires for young men he encounters, his awareness that the farm will fail, and his fierce loyalty to Maryna. Julian's wife Wanda attempts to hang herself but is rescued. One by one, members depart: Julian and Wanda return to Poland, other couples scatter, and the painter Jakub Goldberg leaves for New York. During a ride into the San Bernardino Mountains, Maryna offers Ryszard a near-confession of love but pulls back. By June, the community has dissolved. Bogdan sells the farm at a $2,000 loss, and Maryna decides to attempt an American stage career.

Maryna arrives in San Francisco in late June 1877 and engages Miss Mildred Collingridge, a speech teacher, to work with her daily on English pronunciation. Angus Barton, the California Theatre's manager, agrees to an audition. Maryna performs the death scene from Adrienne Lecouvreur and wins an immediate booking. Barton insists on changing her name: She is billed as Marina Zalenska. She opens on September 3, and despite a fire when her veil catches flame during Act Three, the performance is a sensation, earning 11 curtain calls. Afterward, she and Ryszard become lovers, but during a brief tour to Virginia City, Nevada, she breaks with him, telling him she cannot be both a great actress and his lover. Ryszard is devastated.

Maryna debuts in New York in mid-December 1877 at the Fifth Avenue Theatre with Camille to ecstatic reviews. She acquires a personal manager, Harry H. Warnock, who bills her as "Countess Zalenska." Bogdan rejoins her in early January 1878, and the first national tour takes Maryna across the country. She forms her own company of 25 actors and acquires a private railway car named "Poland." She adds Shakespeare, melodrama, and even a single ill-fated performance of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House to her repertory. A summer 1879 return to Poland confirms her commitment to America. A London season proves only conditionally successful, as critics never stop mentioning her accent. She returns to the country where she feels most at home.

Over subsequent years, Maryna becomes the acknowledged greatest actress on the American stage, performing up to 300 times a year. She and Bogdan reach a new equilibrium: She acknowledges his need for separate adventures, and he accepts his role as her steadfast support. In a late scene, Bogdan confesses he has been flying with the aeronauts, and Maryna tells him she would give up the stage for him, an offer he emphatically refuses.

The novel's final chapter is an extended monologue by Edwin Booth, the greatest American actor of the era, who invites Maryna to his rooms at the Players Club in New York after a joint performance of The Merchant of Venice. Drunk and brilliant, Booth reflects on acting, Shakespeare, his father's madness, and his brother John Wilkes Booth's assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. He challenges Maryna to find her "vein of rage," accusing her of being too appeasing. He produces a human skull bequeathed to his father by a condemned man and opens the window onto a snowy night, inviting Maryna to look at the stars. The monologue closes with Booth proposing they refine a moment in The Merchant of Venice together, acknowledging the long tour ahead: a partnership between two great actors, each bearing private griefs, sustained by the work that gives their lives meaning.