Her entry begins:I have always found it hard to read more than one fiction book at a time, so I am a one-book girl when it comes to novels. My current read? The Obituary Writer by Ann Hood. I picked it up because I was enchanted by the cover image and the title (I used to write obituaries and gave the job to my heroine in my debut novel, The Butterfly Sister.) Hood writes from two different points of view—one is Claire, a suburban housewife in the 1960s and the other is Vivien, an obituary writer in 1919. I was hooked from the very first line, which mentions the words affair and missing boy in the same sentence. I am...[read on]About the book, from the publisher:
The past just arrived on Ruby's doorstep...Learn more about the book and author at Amy Gail Hansen's website.
To uncover the truth about a friend's disappearance, a fragile young woman must silence the ghosts of her past in this moving debut tale that intertwines mystery, madness, betrayal, love, and literature.
"My past was never more than one thought, one breath, one heartbeat away. And then, on that particular October evening, it literally arrived at my doorstep."
Twenty-two-year-old Ruby Rousseau is haunted by memories of Tarble, the women's college she fled from ten months earlier, and the painful love affair that pushed her to the brink of tragedy.
When a suitcase belonging to a former classmate named Beth arrives on her doorstep, Ruby is plunged into a dark mystery. Beth has gone missing,and the suitcase is the only tangible evidence of her whereabouts.
Inside the bag, Ruby discovers a tattered copy of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, the book she believes was a harbinger of her madness. Is someone trying to send her a message—and what does it mean?
The search for answers leads to Tarble. As Ruby digs into Beth's past, she has no choice but to confront her own—an odyssey that will force her to reexamine her final days at school, including the married professor who broke her heart and the ghosts of illustrious writers, dead by their own hand, who beckoned her to join their tragic circle.
But will finding the truth finally set Ruby free . . . or send her over the edge of sanity?
Writers Read: Amy Gail Hansen.
--Marshal Zeringue
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