By Accident
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- $23.99
Publisher Description
A grieving mother finds solace from her son’s death in a relationship that quickly blurs the line between friendship and intimacy.
By Accident portrays a year in the life of a woman after the accidental death of her teenage son. Laura Lucas is numbed by the loss, a loss that is paralleled in the spate of upscale construction—and attendant destruction—in her starter-home neighborhood. It’s about Laura's relationship with a young tree surgeon who slowly becomes a replacement for her son—but also an object of desire.
The story reveals the delicate nexus where solace becomes sex; the role of men and women as unmarried friends; and examines grief in a marriage. It portrays the pain of change and the poignancy of acceptance through Laura's eyes, and occasionally, through the quirky outlook of her ten-year-old daughter. And before the story ends, another brutal, random accident will redefine Laura's life once again.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kelly's latest, a delicate novel of grief and recovery, takes readers deep into the mind of a grieving mother. After Laura's son, Whit, dies, she's emotionally paralyzed. Her husband, Russ, is busy with his construction business, and their teen daughter, Ebie, grows disconnected. But when a jovial young arborist named Elliot moves in next door and befriends Laura and Ebie, Laura slowly warms back up to the world, and Elliot, whose fun-loving nature can verge on reckless, takes to Ebie with a Peter Pan like verve. As it becomes clear that Russ is keeping important secrets from his family, Laura and Elliot's emotional intimacy creepily escalates (is he a substitute for her son? an object of lust?), and Kelly drops in cinematic flashbacks that ratchet up the tension. Kelly's characters all excellent, except cipherlike Russ imbue this novel with an understated power. Kelly doesn't go in for the cheap movie-of-the-week melodrama often found in grieving mother fiction, and the reader is much better off for it.
