Susan Taylor Chehak

"How about if, for now, we skip the once upon a time? That, and who she was and where she was born, how she grew up with her mom (accountant) and her dad (actuary) in a world of numbers and dates and formulas and facts with one living sister (Janet, seven years older) and one dead brother (Horace, the infamous unborn twin) in a smallish brick house in Nowhere, New York, with trees in the yard (maple and oak) and bushes by the windows (juniper) and flowers in the garden (roses, lilies, irises) and one of those quilted covers over the toaster that matched the oven mitts above the stove-just to give you a feeling for Mrs. Mifflin and her sense of style (toilet seat covers, refrigerator magnets, pastel sweater sets, sensible shoes). How about instead we go right to the point where she found herself at the end of this story, all out of options with nowhere to turn because she'd already done everything that she could think to do to put things right again when they had all gone so terribly, and to her mind tragically, wrong? Which was: holed up in the English Department offices on the third floor of Stanley Hall at Springer College in Brevity, Iowa-Veritas Odit Moras-with the triple loop of a fully loaded Ping-Pong ball bomb collar around her neck like a string of oversized pearls on a little girl playing pretend, which is pretty much what she was. Except that this was not a game, it was real. One flick of the Bic and ka-boom. What else do you want to know?..."" Chehak's] ambitiously imaginative novel questions the very nature of reality... a] diverting exploration of metaphysical concepts. Winsome and smartly playful." -Kirkus Reviews

She's seen her times and her town change forever, and when murder destroys the peace, she knows that nothing can be the way it once was. "Absolutely stunning... Reads with the force and generational sweep of some ancient rural myth." -New York Times Book ReviewIn this old-fashioned tale of murder and retribution we meet a strong-minded woman who has always feared for her family and tried to protect her father and her two sons. Annie D. was raised in Nebraska, all flat farmland and cornfields, except its rivers. Widowed and living in the town of Wizen River, she tends to her beloved garden and enjoys frequent visits from her old high school friend, Phoebe Tooker. Then one fine morning Phoebe drives her Chevy off the road, into a ditch, and up an oak tree, and Annie D. is forced to take stock.Life in Wizen River appears to be idyllic. But we soon learn that the idyll has been disrupted by two violent killings, and when a third young woman is found strangled and raped, we trust to Annie D., with her sharp tongue and good heart, to make sense of it all.A Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award Nominee