Tell Me What I Am
A Novel
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Two women wrenched apart by a family member’s disappearance must find a way back to each other in this haunting page-turner by the author of A Crooked Tree.
Nessa Garvey’s sister Deena vanished without a trace in Philadelphia in 2004. In all that time, Nessa has never once doubted what her instincts told her: her sister’s ex-husband has gotten away with an unspeakable crime.
Nessa’s niece, Ruby, is raised by her father, the man Nessa suspects, in rural Vermont, on the shores of Lake Champlain. Ruby learns how to hunt, how the plants and trees grow, how to avoid making her father angry. The one question she longs to ask is the one she knows she cannot voice: What really happened to her mother?
Over fourteen years, four hundred miles apart, these two women slowly begin to unearth the family history of insidious power and control that has shaped them both in such different ways. But can they reach each other in time?
Tell Me What I Am is a riveting, indelible tour de force of buried secrets and unlikely resilience.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mannion (A Crooked Tree) explores the long shadow of domestic violence in this outstanding mystery. In 2004, Nessa Garvey's sister, Deena, disappears after leaving their shared Philadelphia apartment for work. Nessa feels certain Deena's abusive ex, Lucas Chevalier, is responsible—particularly when he uses Deena's absence to gain custody of the couple's four-year-old daughter, Ruby—but Lucas's mother alibis him. He then convinces a judge to deny Nessa visitation rights to see Ruby and decamps with the girl to Vermont. Nessa refuses to move on, however, obsessing over her sister and niece's fates; meanwhile, as Ruby grows up exploring Lake Champlain's islands, she learns to hunt, farm, and manage her father's temper. She knows not to ask about her "messed up" mother, whom Lucas says abandoned them when Ruby was two, but when someone mails her a picture contradicting that timeline, she starts questioning her father's motives. Mannion expertly intertwines Nessa and Ruby's stories via visceral, close-third-person narration that alternates perspectives, and weaves through time to build tension and dole out reveals. Her subtly shaded characters add nuance and poignancy. This artful slow burn should earn Mannion new fans.
