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Let Me Die in
His Footsteps
Agent: Jenny Bent
Dutton, June 2015. World English.
France: Le Masque/Hachette.
Finished books available.
Winner of the 2016 Edgar Award
#10 Australian Bestseller
From
Edgar-Award winner Lori Roy, an extraordinary novel that seamlessly blends
elements of suspense and Southern literary fiction in a novel inspired by
events surrounding the last lawful public hanging in the United States.
In
Browerton, Kentucky, 1936, Joseph Carl Baine hung by his neck until dead,
the last man lawfully hung in plain sight. For the multitude who carried with
them the weight of this stark punishment and its imperfect justice, theirs is a
destiny of unrest.
Some
twenty years later, something is in the air, a spark, a crackle, something that
feels a terrible lot like trouble coming. Only Annie Holleran can sense it,
because she has the know-how—the gift of knowing how a thing will end before
its end has come. On her day of ascension--the half birthday between fifteen
and sixteen, when local girls by tradition peer into a well to learn the
identity of their future husbands--Annie is faced with the lifelong fear that
Aunt Juna, the woman who saw to the hanging of Joseph Carl Baine, will finally
return home.
At
the Holleran lavender farm, the rows are perfectly spaced, but the rich purple
blooms are no cover for the stain of secrets that took root on Aunt Juna’s day
of ascension those many years ago. Annie has lived all her life with the fear
of turning evil like Aunt Juna, and as Annie prepares for her own ascension,
she and the whole of Browerton brace for Juna’s return.
The
past is stealing Annie’s future, and she will not survive if bygones get the
better of her. With the power of her know-how, the care of her family, and the
hope of finding her own true love, she must avenge the wrong of a generation.
“Open Let Me Die in His Footsteps anywhere and Lori
Roy’s melodious voice will float off the page, This Depression-era story is a
sad one, written in every shade of Gothic black. But its true colors emerge in
the rich textures of the narrative, and in the music of that voice, as hypnotic
as the scent off a field of lavender.” —The
New York Times
“In the lavender-scented landscape of Lori Roy’s fine
novel, secrets from the past emerge like long buried locusts, and the world of
young Annie Holleran is changed forever. This is a beautifully observed
story whose details of time, place, and character are stunning little jewels
sure to dazzle the eye on every page. Annie’s journey from the comforting
lies of childhood to the hard truths destined to shape her as a woman is one
that readers will long remember. Quite simply put, I loved this
book.” —William Kent Krueger, New York
Times bestselling author of Ordinary Grace and The
Cork O’Connor Series
“Let Me Die in His Footsteps," is a hybrid of
mystery, coming-of-age and Southern gothic literature, inspired by the last
lawful public hanging in the United States. It continues her track record of
dark, creepy excellence… Roy
does wonderful work weaving her complementary narratives into a naturally
cohesive novel, and the central mystery…unravels in a way that is
simultaneously elegant and unexpected… The novel is impressive [and] carefully crafted
with a compelling vision and well-honed prose. Scenes between sisters are as
rife with tension as sequences played out with cigarettes glowing in the dark;
not a sentence or detail is wasted.” —The
LA Times
“This powerful story inspired by the last legal public
hanging in the U.S. should transfix readers right up to its stunning final
twist.” —Publisher’s Weekly, starred
review
“Roy easily reaches back in time to conjure small-town
Kentucky of 1936 and 1952, as Annie and her adoptive mother reveal the
aftermath of a young boy’s mysterious death. Edgar winner Roy’s third novel
(following Until She Comes Home, 2013) is an atmospheric, vividly drawn tale
that twists her trademark theme of family secrets with the crackling spark of
the “know-how” for a suspenseful, ghost-story feel.” —Booklist, starred review
“Young love, Southern folklore, family feuds, and
crimes of passion . . . Roy describes life on a lavender farm in rural Kentucky
in vivid detail, and the mystery of what happened years ago will keep readers
engaged until the end.” —Library Journal
“A Faulkner-ian tale of sex and violence from the
Kentucky hills.”—Kirkus Reviews
"Reading Lori Roy is a sinuous, near-physical
experience, her stories so rich and well-told they twine into the reader in a
manner both gentle and profoundly deep. I consider her writing a love-sonnet to
American letters. Simply lovely." —John Hart, Edgar-Award winning
and New York Times bestselling author of The King of
Lies and Iron House
“[Let Me Die in His Footsteps] moves into a new
genre for Roy: Southern Gothic. It teems with family feuds, forbidden love,
second sight and wronged innocents, all held together by Roy's taut style and
gift for suspense… In a story that's alternately spooky and steamy,
Roy makes deft use of her rural setting, where almost everyone is connected by
lifelong bonds of blood or friendship — or revenge. Let Me Die in His
Footsteps gives up some of its secrets easily, but others are buried deep,
waiting to deliver shocks we didn't see coming.” —Tampa Bay
Times
“Edgar Award winner Lori Roy… serves up a mystery with
a thick, rich blend of Southern Gothic mainstays, including love, death, a
prevailing shadow of darkness, a twist of the supernatural and even a hint of
madness…This coming-of-age story dropped into a world of hardscrabble existence
has an almost painful poignancy.” —Forth
Worth Star-Telegram
“Desire and regret — for love, life choices and
obsession — are as palpable as the lavender fields that separate two feuding
families in Lori Roy's third novel. Since her 2011 Edgar Award-winning debut,
"Bent Road," Roy has established a niche for lyrical prose in a noir story…Let
Me Die in His Footsteps gracefully moves toward a stunning finale as Roy
unfurls insightful character studies. Roy succinctly shows the ennui of
teenagers, regardless of year. Violence, when it does come, erupts quickly and
even quietly, making its impact even more intense. While Roy uses as background
the last legal public hanging in the United States, the powerful Let Me Die in
His Footsteps is a story about what links families, and drives them
apart.” —The South Florida Sun Sentinel
“The Edgar award-winning author weaved her characters
into my heart and made them unforgettable. “Let Me Die in His Footsteps” is an
unusual book I couldn’t put down because I had to know what really happened in
the mother’s past and what would happen to Annie.” —Suspense Magazine
“Annie Holleran, the coming-of-age character in this
impressive Southern Gothic tale, “knows a thing is coming before it has come.”
It’s a “curse—or a blessing” that Annie shares with her Aunt Juna. Like her
aunt’s, Annie’s eyes are black “through and through” and folks in rural
Kentucky believe that’s where the “evil lives.” But can evil pass from
generation to generation? The narrative moves with measured suspense between
Annie’s story in 1952 and Aunt Juna’s in 1936. Author Lori Roy teases out tension
so masterfully that, like Annie, we, too, know something bad is coming.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“With pithy characters and a winding plot leading
readers to dark places they won't anticipate, this is a story of sisters,
lovers, mothers and daughters, and what can happen when evil slips its way
between those ties.” —The
Associated Press
“The richness of their characters makes their
decisions crackle…Which, as any Harper Lee fan will tell you, is what makes
these stories endure in our very protective hearts… “While intense and at times
a little ruthless, Roy’s novel has elements of both what we love about the
southern gothic mixed with the other perennial American classic: the
coming-of-age tale. This is a dark story of adolescence in all of its awkward,
terrible, exhilarating glory. And that’s what makes it sing.” —Bustle
“Inevitably, Roy’s novel calls to mind the oft-cited
William Faulkner lines about the long reach of the past…Roy excels in depicting
the menace lurking in the natural world.” —The Washington Post
“Let
Me Die in His Footsteps could definitely be described as atmospheric:
the isolation, the farmhouse that never gets sunlight, the dank barn, the
intoxicating scent of lavender, the suffocating superstitions of a small
community, and the things people see while they are creeping around at night.
Roy’s language is evocative but not showy, giving readers a vivid sense of
place.” —The Wichita Eagle
“Rife with family feuds, forbidden love and dark
secrets meant to be hidden for a lifetime, Let Me Die In His Footsteps is a an almost
Gothic tale of family coupled with descriptions of life on a farm in the
dustbowl '30s and ever-changing '50s. This would be another good one to add to
the Book Club reading list. Because who doesn't want to weigh in on the local
secrets?” —The News-Gazette
“Desire
and regret as palpable as the fragrant lavender fields that separate two
feuding families permeate this tale of two women separated by decades but
linked by family bonds in rural Kentucky.” —South Florida
Also by Lori Roy:
Agent: Jenny Bent
Dutton, April 2011. World English.
France: Le Masque/ Hachette. Japan: Shueisha. Korea: Viche
Books. Taiwan: Ten Points.
Books available.
Winner of the 2012 Edgar Award
A Library Journal Best
Book of the Year
A Kansas City Star Best
Book of the Year
A Florida Sun Sentinel Best
Book of the Year
Celia
Scott flees the race riots of Detroit with her three children and husband and
heads for his small hometown in Kansas. Yet Kansas is not a reprieve. A new
tension starts to build: a small child has disappeared and increasingly the
fingers are pointing toward Celia’s own family. Celia’s sister-in-law died
mysteriously years ago and now the unsolved case of the lost girl has everyone
remembering the similarities. As the mysteries unravel, so does Celia’s family.
It is only when the truth explodes around them that they can find a way back
towards a rough kind of redemption. Bent Road captures the
flat brutality of the Kansas plains in pure and spare prose.
"A remarkably assured debut novel. Rich and
evocative, Lori Roy's voice is a welcome addition to American fiction.” —Dennis Lehane
“Favorite Suspense Novel” —Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book
Review
“A former tax accountant, author Roy is calculated in
the way she builds and eases tension; when a local girl goes missing, even the
simplest scenes crackle with suspense. Inhabiting a world where lights are dim
and laughter is hushed, Roy’s characters still manage to shine.” —People Magazine
“But Roy is in full narrative command, taking her time
to point the reader to the next direction, but always certain – even if we are
not – that what comes next is what must happen, not what we hope or wish would
transpire.” —Sarah Weinman, NPR
“Roy's outstanding debut melds strong characters and
an engrossing plot with an evocative sense of place…couples a vivid view
of the isolation and harshness of farm life with a perceptive look at the
emotions that can rage beneath the surface. This Midwestern noir with gothic
undertones is sure to make several 2011 must-read lists.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Roy
's exceptional debut novel is full of tension, complex characters, and deftly
gothic overtones. Readers of Tana French's In the Woods will find
this dark and satisfying story a great read. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal, starred review
“This odd, dark and often creepy tale of a
dysfunctional community and a family that fits right in will keep readers
wondering right until the last page.” —Kirkus
Reviews, starred review
"A cruel calculus drives Lori Roy’s impressive
debut novel...Like Michael Chabon’s work, which sometimes crosses genres, Roy’s
novel could be called literary fiction or mystery. Whatever the label, “Bent
Road” is written with the care and craft of stand-out storytelling.” —The Kansas City Star
"Set
in the beautifully rendered Kansas plains, "Bent Road" is a
family
story with a suspenseful Gothic core, one which shows
that the past always has a price,
whether you're running from it or back toward it.
Crisp, evocative prose, full-blooded characters, and a haunting setting
make this debut stand out.” —Michael
Koryta, author of So Cold the River
“In
her debut mystery, Roy excels at creating the kind of ominous mood that is
unique to the novel’s small-town setting, in which the church holds sway, and
family secrets are locked up tight. Terrifying and touching, the novel is
captivating from beginning to end.” —Booklist
“Dropping
us in a world of seeming simplicity, in a time of seeming calm, Lori Roy
transforms
1960s small-town Kansas into a haunting memoryscape. Bringing
to mind the family horrors
of Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres and the
dark emotional terrain of Tana French’s In the
Woods, Bent
Road manages to be both psychologically acute and breathtakingly
suspenseful, burrowing into your brain with a feverish
power all its own.”—Megan Abbott, Edgar award winning
novelist, Queenpin
Until She Comes Home
Agent: Jenny Bent
Dutton, June 2013. World English.
France: Le Masque/Hachette. Japan: Shueisha.
Books available.
Nominated for the 2014 Edgar Award
A New York Times Editor’s
Choice
One of Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s
Favorite Mysteries of 2013
Following one of the most acclaimed debuts
of recent years—including an Edgar Award for Best First Novel—Lori Roy returns
with a novel of spellbinding suspense in which a pair of seemingly unrelated
murders crumbles the façade of a changing Detroit neighborhood.
In
1958 Detroit, on Alder Avenue, neighbors struggle to care for neighbors amidst
a city ripe with conflicts that threaten their peaceful street.
Grace,
Alder’s only expectant mother, eagerly awaits her first born. Best friend,
Julia, prepares to welcome twin nieces. And Malina sets the tone with her
stylish dresses, tasteful home, and ironfisted stewardship of St. Alban’s bake
sale.
Life
erupts when child-like Elizabeth disappears while in the care of Grace and
Julia. All the ladies fear the recent murder of a black woman at the factory on
Willingham Avenue where their husbands work may warn of what has become of
Elizabeth, and they worry what is yet to become of Julia—the last to see
Elizabeth alive.
The
men mount an around-the-clock search, leaving their families vulnerable to
sinister elements hidden in plain sight. Only Grace knows what happened, but
her mother warns her not to tell. “No man wants to know this about his wife.”
Ashamed that her silence puts loved-ones in harm’s way, Grace gravitates toward
the women of Willingham Avenue, who recognize her suffering as their own.
Through their acceptance, Grace conquers her fear and dares to
act.
On
Alder Avenue comes a sound like a gunshot, ripping through the vicious secrets
that bind friends, neighbors, spouses. For the wicked among them, the walk home
will be long.
“If you really want to know what shape your hometown
is in, just take a good look at the street you live on, trying to see it as a
stranger might. That’s the simple, heartbreaking truth Lori Roy delivers, sotto
voce, in Until She Comes Home quietly
shocking account of the tiny tremors in the life of a city that warn of
cataclysms to come... One by one, these good people start breaking down,
revealing the sad and in some cases shameful secrets they’ve kept locked away.
Roy executes these transformations with such a delicate touch that the subtle
alterations in a marriage, a friendship, a neighborhood hardly register—until
the day someone looks around and realizes that all the trees have died.” —The
New York Times
“Roy’s troubling
novel leaves readers guessing until the end. It will appeal strongly to those
fascinated by the psychological aspects of violent crimes and the motivations
of those who commit them.” —Library Journal
“Roy
makes every detail count as she builds her characters and gently but inexorably
leads them to reexamine their own lives.” —Booklist, starred review
"Roy follows her Edgar-winning debut, Bent Road, with a moody, tension-filled tale
of intertwined crimes set in late 1950s Detroit.” —Publishers
Weekly
“A
beautifully written, at times lyrical, study of a disintegrating community.
Roy, author of the Edgar Award-winning mystery Bent Road (2011), tackles similar themes here
with equally successful results.” —Kirkus Review, starred
review
“Lori Roy has entered the arena of great American
authors shared by Williams, Faulkner and Lee.” —Bookreporter
“Roy has created a tour-de-force of mood and
suspense…If language can be delicate and brutal at the same time, this is what
Roy achieves in a beautifully written, dark exploration of fears both real and
imagined, of old ways facing upheaval…Roy has contributed a challenging,
thoughtful and riveting story. Seeing the marvels she can create with words, we
can only hope she’ll continue to share her talent with readers.” —Bookpage
Lori Roy’s bio:
Lori
Roy has been a student of Dennis Lehane, Andre Dubus III, and Sterling Watson.
She was born and raised in Manhattan, Kansas.