The Second Mother
A Novel
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
"Proving Stephen King isn't the only author who can make a scenic small town in Maine feel menacing, Jenny Milchman's The Second Mother is a haunting thriller."—POPSUGAR
Opportunity: Teacher needed in one-room schoolhouse on remote island in Maine. Find the freedom in a fresh start.
Julie Weathers isn't sure if she's running away or starting over, but moving to a remote island off the coast of Maine feels right for someone with reasons to flee her old life. The sun-washed, sea-stormed speck of land seems welcoming, the lobster plentiful, and the community close and tightly knit. She finds friends in her nearest neighbor and Callum, a man who appears to be using the island for the same thing as she: escape.
But as Julie takes on the challenge of teaching the island's children, she comes to suspect that she may have traded one place shrouded in trouble for another, and she begins to wonder if the greatest danger on Mercy Island is its lost location far out to sea, or the people who live there.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Desperate for a fresh start after a family tragedy, Adirondacks resident Julie Weathers, the heroine of this atmospheric but character-challenged psychological thriller from Mary Higgins Clark Award winner Milchman (Wicked River), jumps at the chance to move to a remote Maine island to teach in a one-room schoolhouse. On the first night, the house provided for her echoes with what appears to be ghostly laughter; the next evening there's a very tangible intruder 11-year-old Peter Meyers, only scion of the powerful Hempstead clan who rule the island and its primary industry, lobster fishing. When the newcomer returns Peter, one of her future students, to his grandmother, the imposing matriarch, instead of showing gratitude, runs her off the property, setting the stage for the increasingly serious conflicts between the pair that will flare as Julie attempts to understand the gifted but troubled boy. Though Milchman laces the fairy tale setting with considerable charm and stages a pair of suspenseful aquatic life-or-death sequences, in the end her largely inconsistent, unconvincing characters capsize the story. Fans will hope for a return to form next time.
