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Arrowood

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Details:

  • Author: McHugh, Laura
    Contributor:

    Scott, Sarah

    Summary:

    "This robust, old-fashioned gothic mystery has everything you're looking for: a creepy old house, a tenant with a secret history, and even a few ghosts. Laura McHugh's novel sits at the intersection of memory and history, astutely asking whether we carry the past or it carries us." - Jodi Picoult. A haunting novel from the author of The Weight of Blood about a young woman's return to her childhood home and her encounter with the memories and family secrets it holds Arrowood is the most ornate and grand of the historical houses that line the Mississippi River in southern Iowa. But the house has a mystery it has never revealed: It's where Arden Arrowood's younger twin sisters vanished on her watch twenty years ago - never to be seen again. After the twins' disappearance, Arden's parents divorced and the Arrowoods left the big house that had been in their family for generations. And Arden's own life has fallen apart: She can't finish her master's thesis, and a misguided love affair has ended badly. She has held on to the hope that her sisters are still alive, and it seems she can't move forward until she finds them. When her father dies and she inherits Arrowood, Arden returns to her childhood home determined to discover what really happened to her sisters that traumatic summer. Arden's return to the town of Keokuk?and the now infamous house that bears her name?is greeted with curiosity. But she is welcomed back by her old neighbor and first love, Ben Ferris, whose family, she slowly learns, knows more about the Arrowoods' secrets and their small, closed community than she ever realized. With the help of a young amateur investigator, Arden tracks down the man who was the prime suspect in the kidnapping. But the house and the surrounding town hold their secrets close - and the truth, when Arden finds it, is more devastating than she ever could have imagined. Arrowood is a powerful and resonant novel that examines the ways in which our lives are shaped by memory. As with her award-winning debut novel, The Weight of Blood, Laura McHugh has written a thrilling novel in which nothing is as it seems, and in which our longing for the past can take hold of the present in insidious and haunting ways. Praise for Arrowood "Superb and subtle psychological suspense, and a compelling mystery, too ... I thought I knew who did it, but I was wrong - four times." - Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Jack Reacher novels "An eloquently eerie tale." - Booklist "Poignant ... lyrical." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) Praise for The Weight of Blood "Laura McHugh's atmospheric debut ... conjures a menacingly beautiful Ozark setting and a nest of poisonous family secrets reminiscent of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone." - Vogue"A tense, taut novel and a truly remarkable debut ... a suspenseful thrill ride that satisfies in all the right ways." - BookPage "[An] expertly crafted thriller." - Entertainment Weekly, "The Must List" From the Hardcover edition

    Genre: Thrillers (Fiction)
    Original Publisher: [New York] , Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
    Language(s): English
    ISBN:

    9780451482976

    ,

    0451482972

Details

DC Contributor

Scott, Sarah

Abstract

"This robust, old-fashioned gothic mystery has everything you're looking for: a creepy old house, a tenant with a secret history, and even a few ghosts. Laura McHugh's novel sits at the intersection of memory and history, astutely asking whether we carry the past or it carries us." - Jodi Picoult. A haunting novel from the author of The Weight of Blood about a young woman's return to her childhood home and her encounter with the memories and family secrets it holds Arrowood is the most ornate and grand of the historical houses that line the Mississippi River in southern Iowa. But the house has a mystery it has never revealed: It's where Arden Arrowood's younger twin sisters vanished on her watch twenty years ago - never to be seen again. After the twins' disappearance, Arden's parents divorced and the Arrowoods left the big house that had been in their family for generations. And Arden's own life has fallen apart: She can't finish her master's thesis, and a misguided love affair has ended badly. She has held on to the hope that her sisters are still alive, and it seems she can't move forward until she finds them. When her father dies and she inherits Arrowood, Arden returns to her childhood home determined to discover what really happened to her sisters that traumatic summer. Arden's return to the town of Keokuk?and the now infamous house that bears her name?is greeted with curiosity. But she is welcomed back by her old neighbor and first love, Ben Ferris, whose family, she slowly learns, knows more about the Arrowoods' secrets and their small, closed community than she ever realized. With the help of a young amateur investigator, Arden tracks down the man who was the prime suspect in the kidnapping. But the house and the surrounding town hold their secrets close - and the truth, when Arden finds it, is more devastating than she ever could have imagined. Arrowood is a powerful and resonant novel that examines the ways in which our lives are shaped by memory. As with her award-winning debut novel, The Weight of Blood, Laura McHugh has written a thrilling novel in which nothing is as it seems, and in which our longing for the past can take hold of the present in insidious and haunting ways. Praise for Arrowood "Superb and subtle psychological suspense, and a compelling mystery, too ... I thought I knew who did it, but I was wrong - four times." - Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Jack Reacher novels "An eloquently eerie tale." - Booklist "Poignant ... lyrical." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) Praise for The Weight of Blood "Laura McHugh's atmospheric debut ... conjures a menacingly beautiful Ozark setting and a nest of poisonous family secrets reminiscent of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone." - Vogue"A tense, taut novel and a truly remarkable debut ... a suspenseful thrill ride that satisfies in all the right ways." - BookPage "[An] expertly crafted thriller." - Entertainment Weekly, "The Must List" From the Hardcover edition

Genre
Thrillers (Fiction)
Publisher (Source)

[New York]

Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group

Not specified

Record

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