Nightjar
Stories
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- Pedido anticipado
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- Se espera: 7 jul 2026
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- USD 10.99
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- Pedido anticipado
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- USD 10.99
Descripción editorial
From the award-winning author of the national bestseller Idaho comes a stunning collection of stories that explore how unexpected intuitions forever alter the lives of ordinary people.
“These are marvelous and unsettling stories.”—Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love
“In clear and distinctive prose, Emily Ruskovich evokes the epic scope of quiet lives.”—Paula Hawkins, author of A Slow Fire Burning
Five years after moving into the isolated house in rural Oregon where her husband lived as a child, the protagonist of “Victor’s Room” begins to doubt her husband’s account of his family’s past. In “Round Lake,” a young woman’s plans to meet a lover in Tokyo are upended when she learns a startling truth about her mother’s death. In “Owl,” winner of an O. Henry Award, a fur trapper reckons with the dreadful origins of his marriage after his wife is brutally injured by four adolescent boys.
Haunting and psychologically provocative, and set against the vivid backdrop of the Pacific Northwest, Nightjar illuminates the secret, instinctive knowledge that lies just under the surface of our awareness.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ruskovich (Idaho) explores the implications of mysteries and lies in this potent collection of five stories. In the powerhouse opener, "Victor's Room," Rebecca and her college professor fall in love, marry, and start a family. After they relocate to his bucolic childhood home in rural Washington State, Rebecca gradually discovers her husband is not the man she thought he was. A hidden life is also the jarring theme of the eerie, O. Henry Award–winning "Owl," about a husband caring for his wife after she's inexplicably shot by hunters in the woods. Eventually, the husband uncovers a secret that might explain what happened. In the title entry, 12-year-old Tess is mystified by a strange object she finds on her family's farmland, a reflective disk that preserves an image of the sky on its surface. She shows it to her indifferent four-year-old brother, Rory, whom she often babysits and who views her, Tess discerns, as a "failed little person pretending to have power and getting paid for it." Rory also taunts Tess for believing that the disk came from aliens, but her understanding of the object isn't so simplistic, and the disk guides her to appreciate the power of arcane beauty. Throughout, Ruskovich blends urgent pacing with lush wooded scenery and intimate psychological details. It's a marvel.
