Between Here and April
By Deborah Copaken Kogan; Deborah Copaken Kogan
(Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, Hardcover, 9781565125629, 280pp.)
Publication Date: October 2008
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Paperback
Categories: Literary
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Selected by Indie Booksellers for the November 2008 Indie Next List“I loved Between Here and April, which on so many levels raises issues -- memory, facing the past and admitting its impact on the present, motherly love, and fidelity -- all in a novel that has a suspenseful race to its conclusion. Readers will be satisfyingly rewarded.”
-- Cheryl McKeon, Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, WA
Description
When a deep-rooted memory suddenly surfaces, Elizabeth Burns becomes obsessed with the long-ago disappearance of her childhood friend April Cassidy. Driven to investigate, Elizabeth discovers a thirty-five-year-old newspaper article revealing the details that had been hidden from her as a child-shocking revelations about April's mother, Adele.
Elizabeth, now herself a mother, tracks down the people who knew Adele Cassidy and who thought that they knew what was going through her mind before she committed that most incomprehensible of crimes. She seeks out anyone who might help piece together the final months, days, and hours of this troubled woman's life-from Adele's former neighbor to her psychiatrist to her sister.
But the answers are more elusive than any normal investigation can yield, the questions raised are difficult to contemplate. In fact, the further into the story Elizabeth digs, the more she is forced to accept that she and Adele might not be so different.
Elizabeth's exploration thus leads her ultimately back to herself: her compromised marriage, her increasing self-doubt, her desire for more out of her career and her life, and finally to a fearsome reckoning with what it means to be a wife and mother.
Elizabeth, now herself a mother, tracks down the people who knew Adele Cassidy and who thought that they knew what was going through her mind before she committed that most incomprehensible of crimes. She seeks out anyone who might help piece together the final months, days, and hours of this troubled woman's life-from Adele's former neighbor to her psychiatrist to her sister.
But the answers are more elusive than any normal investigation can yield, the questions raised are difficult to contemplate. In fact, the further into the story Elizabeth digs, the more she is forced to accept that she and Adele might not be so different.
Elizabeth's exploration thus leads her ultimately back to herself: her compromised marriage, her increasing self-doubt, her desire for more out of her career and her life, and finally to a fearsome reckoning with what it means to be a wife and mother.
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