Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Silver Falls Library | FIC BRAFFET | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Library | FIC BRA | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
As she did in her darkly thrilling debut, Josie and Jack, Kelly Braffet again explores the often ambiguous nature of love and danger in a riveting novel of suspense. When twenty-something drifter Miranda Cassidy wrecks her car one night on the way home from a bar, she seizes the accident as an opportunity to reinvent her life. Hitching a ride with a mysterious stranger, she finds quick work and a fresh start hundreds of miles away in an oceanside vacation town. She doesn't look back,figuring no one is going to miss her. But when her mother finds no forwarding address, she senses something terrible has happened. The memory of the tragic disappearance of Miranda's father years before and the force of long-buried emotions drive her on a frantic quest to find her daughter, no matter what the cost.
Author Notes
Kelly Braffet's first novel, Josie and Jack, was published in 2005. It was praised as wicked fun . . . a gothic tour of hell" (Los Angeles Times) and "a compelling study of love, hate, and psychopathic jealousy" (New York Post). Braffet was born in Long Beach, California, in 1976, and has lived in Arizona, rural Pennsylvania and Oxford, England. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University, and has taught novel writing at the Sackett Street Writing Workshop. Shecurrently lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, the writer Owen King."
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Two women in crisis learn important lessons about "life and death and the nature of love" in Braffet's brilliant second novel (after 2005's Jack and Josie). Anne Cassidy, a 48-year-old New Age devotee living in Sedona, Ariz., knows something major has gone wrong when her daughter, Miranda, a college dropout and aimless drifter currently in Pittsburgh, Pa., doesn't answer her calls and Randa's phone is later disconnected. After two months, Anne must face a mother's worst fearAthat her daughter has vanished. Meanwhile, Randa has crashed her car and left it to start a new life after accepting a ride from "George," an odd stranger who's either a serial killer or a covert CIA operative. George drops her off in Lawrence Beach, Va., where she takes a chambermaid job at a cheap motel. At the end of the tourist season, Randa's reduced to living in a friend's van while female bodies continue to surface in the seaside community. In Pittsburgh, Anne hunts for clues to her daughter's disappearance and revisits the equally disturbing disappearance of Nick, her pilot husband, in 1984. Fluid prose, vivid characters and suspenseful twists lead to a hopeful denouement. Author tour. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A suspenseful, emotionally resonant story about a mother and her daughter caught in the mystery of her husband's disappearance. Braffet's lean prose, taut pacing and subtle characterizations here live up to the promise of her debut (Josie and Jack¸ 2005). Anne's husband Nick was a pilot, a charming thrill-seeker and Vietnam vet who went from flying combat in Laos to flying cargo in undisclosed Central American locations. Then the shadowy Western Mountain Aviation called to say Nick's plane had gone down, though they never did find it or him. Distraught, the young widow took her daughter Miranda and fled Pittsburgh for Sedona and the comforts of New Age spiritualism. Twenty years later, Miranda has grown into an angry, isolated 28-year-old dropout, drifting between bad jobs and poor relationships. An unnamed woman has walked away from a car crash and is picked up by a middle-aged man in a sedan. Anne suddenly can't reach her daughter, and sets off to find her. As Anne collects heartrending, baffling clues, we watch Miranda move closer to the dark undertow of her unhappy life. The author's carefully drawn characters and incisive observations on human nature form the heart of her novel. Miranda and Anne are flawed, highly sympathetic beings who struggle to face life in the face of unresolved grief and an impossible web of deceit. Braffet teases the reader with the possibility that all will be revealed about Nick's disappearance, plus a barely-there subplot about a serial killer, but brilliantly plays against genre expectations by placing the real suspense in Miranda's ability to care for herself enough to allow Anne to find her. A keen, heartfelt thrill. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Anne Cassidy and her daughter, Miranda, have not seen each other in three years nor spoken in more than three months. Their relationship fractured many years ago when Miranda's father died and Anne took her daughter from their home in Pittsburg to Arizona. Now that Miranda is an adult, she wants nothing to do with her mother--a mistake that may turn tragic. After Miranda has a car accident, a stranger named George picks her up at the side of the road. He drops her off in a small Virginia town and since no one knows she's missing, Miranda tries to forget her past. However, George keeps popping up at unusual times, and it is unclear if he is connected to the strange killings of young women. Both Anne and Miranda tell their sides of the story, allowing Braffet to flesh out their strained relationship. It is a story about the fragility of relationships as well as the secrets we keep and the lies we tell ourselves to get us through the pain of love and loss. --Carolyn Kubisz Copyright 2006 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Anne Cassidy and her twentysomething daughter, Miranda, are struggling to cope with the sudden death of husband and father Nick, a hotshot pilot for a questionable private aviation company. Anne has become a New Age spiritualist in Sedona while Miranda has turned into a promiscuous and rootless dropout. After a three-year estrangement, Anne sets off to find Miranda and repair their broken lives. No one has heard from Miranda for two months, and Anne fears the worst. But Miranda is actually living under an assumed name in a seedy Virginia beach town, after having survived a drunken car wreck and been rescued by a passing motorist. As Anne gathers clues to Miranda's whereabouts, Miranda's life begins a perilous downward spiral. Her rescuer's interest in her seems questionable in light of rumors of a local serial killer, and her sources of money, booze, and food are drying up as the tourists leave the beach at summer's end. This story could have been a real downer, but Braffet (Josie and Jack) deftly teases readers with the appearance of Nick's flying buddy and some hopeful clues to Nick's tragic death. Her skillful portrayal of unresolved grief and shattered relationships lends sensitivity to this solidly crafted and compelling sophomore effort, which will secure the author's place as a novelist of note. Recommended for all fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/06.] Susan Clifford Braun, Aerospace Corp. Lib., El Segundo, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.