The Skating Pond

With a grace and intensity reminiscent of Elizabeth Smart or William Maxwell ( So Long, See You Tomorrow ), comes a long-awaited second novel of both exquisite pain and extraordinary beauty, by the award-winning author of Losing Eddie . Nearly supernatural in reach, The Skating Pond is a treasurehouse of emotion: the narrator, Elizabeth, is a headstrong, half-wild girl whose story, set on the rough coast of rural Maine, is hewn from terrible family tragedy and intense sexual passion. Orphaned at the age of 15, when her mother dies as a result of a skating accident and her father kills himself after abandoning the family, Elizabeth is left to raise herself. She becomes embroiled in an affair of such ferocity and ardor that she remains haunted by her much older and sometimes cruel lover, even after he has left her. From the Hardcover edition.