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Summary
Summary
A haunting, evocative novel about a woman who might have to face the disturbing truth about her own daughter.
Hanna and Joe send their awkward daughter Dawn off to college hoping that she will finally "come into her own." When she brings her new boyfriend, Rud, to her sister's wedding, her parents try to suppress their troubling impressions of him for Dawn's sake. Not long after, Hanna and Joe suffer a savage attack at home, resulting in Joe's death and Hanna's severe injury and memory loss.
Rud is convicted of the crime, and the community speculates that Dawn may also have been involved. When Rud wins an appeal and Dawn returns to live in the family home, Hanna resolves to recall that traumatic night so she can testify in the retrial, exonerate her daughter, and keep her husband's murderer in jail.
But as those memories resurface, Hanna faces the question of whether she knows her own daughter-and whether she ever did.
Author Notes
Jessica Treadway is the author of Lacy Eye, And Give You Peace, and two story collections, Absent Without Leave and Other Stories and Please Come Back to Me , which received the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. A professor at Emerson College in Boston, she lives with her husband in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this deftly plotted psychological thriller from Treadway (And Give You Peace), a brutal home invasion leaves Hanna Schutt permanently disfigured and her husband, Joe, dead. The speech-impaired Hanna communicates to the police, via what the press dubs "the Nods," that the culprit is Rud Petty, the boyfriend of her younger daughter, Dawn. This, in addition to circumstantial evidence, leads to Petty's conviction. Three years later, Petty has won an appeal, and Hanna is terrified the case will hinge on her faulty memory. College-age Dawn-always an awkward child who was teased mercilessly for her lazy eye-returns to the family home in upstate New York for the first time since the tragedy. It's common knowledge the prosecution sought to indict her for her role in the attack, but charges wouldn't stick. Hanna must learn to separate her fierce love for her daughter and the slowly emerging truth about that fateful night. Treadway paints a devastating portrait of a family torn apart from both the outside and within. Five-city author tour. Agent: Kimberly Witherspoon, Inkwell Management. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Treadway checks in with this novel about family, emotional wounds and blind love. Hanna cheated death three years ago when an intruder came into her Everton, New York, home and beat her accountant husband, Joe, to death as the two were sleeping, but she was left with physical scars and traumatic brain injury. Now the man believed to be their attacker, Rud Petty, has won an appeal and will be getting a new trial, and Hanna is being asked to testify though she doesn't remember the night of the attack. Rud was the boyfriend of Hanna and Joe's daughter Dawn, who's now living in Santa Fe and trying to start a new life. While the prosecutor, Gail Nazarian, tries to make Hanna take the stand, Hanna starts to convince herself that the man she saw the night Joe died wasn't Rud but Emmett Furth, a troubled neighbor boy. To the horror of her eldest daughter, Iris, she welcomes Dawn back into her home. Although a grand jury failed to indict Dawnwho has always been oddmany, including Nazarian and Iris, believe she was involved in the attack. Treadway carefully constructs a scenario in which a mother is asked to believe that her child could not only be an accessory to her husband's coldblooded killing, but has ulterior motives in coming to visit her. Wading knee deep in the suspicions of others, Hanna continues to defend Dawn even though Dawn's own dodgy behavior makes her a perfect suspect. Treadway's book is an excellent exploration of the agony that often accompanies parenthood, but every now and then, readers will find themselves wanting to smack some common sense into Hanna. A worthwhile story marred by a terrible title. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Unlike almost everyone else, Hanna never blamed her daughter, Dawn, for the attack that killed Hanna's husband and left Hanna disfigured. Dawn's boyfriend was convicted of the crime, in which the couple was savagely beaten by a croquet mallet while sleeping in bed. But when the boyfriend wins an appeal, and Dawn returns home, the chilling truth of what happened begins to break through Hanna's determined self-deception. This ominous novel from the author of And Give You Peace (2001) feels like true crime. The slow pacing heightens the intrigue behind every glance and unfinished sentence. The story unfurls with frequent recollections of Dawn's childhood, which was filled with painful events related to her social isolation stemming from her lazy eye and awkwardness. Both Dawn and her mother are more than their roles in the events of that night, however, and as Hanna comes closer to unraveling what happened during the assault, both she and the reader will wonder if they really want to know where the truth lies.--Thoreson, Bridget Copyright 2015 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Three years ago, a brutal attack left Hannah with significant brain trauma and her husband dead, but she can't remember the details. Her accused attacker has won an appeal and only Hannah's testimony can change the outcome. But was the odd-acting new boyfriend of her youngest daughter, Dawn, really responsible, or could it have been the next door neighbor's son, who'd been accused of several petty crimes? Why did Hannah indicate to the police that Dawn had been at the attack? And why is Hannah not as comfortable as she would like with Dawn's request to return home as the new trial approaches? Threadway's (Please Come Back to Me) latest grabs listeners from the beginning and doesn't let up. Narrator Ellen Archer has a calm, clear presence that guides the reader through some disturbing pathways. VERDICT For fiction fans who enjoy their thrillers with a hint of true crime.- J. Sara Paulk, Houston Cty. P.L., Perry, GA © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
