At 15, Polly Deschamps ran away to escape the onslaughts of an alcoholic mother and abusive boyfriends. Since then, her life has been mostly dismal and lonely, a numbing succession of dull jobs and narrow streets. When she meets Marshall Marchand, all that changes. This New Orleans architect seems near perfect: attractive, bright, charming. Drawn to one another, they marry and settle into their new lives. At first, things go well, but gradually, Polly falls into worry over Marshall's increasingly bleak moods, which she associates with his frequent contact with his mysterious brother Danny. Bit by bit, details emerge that connect the Marchands in some way to a series of 30-year-old unsolved Minnesota murders. To save her marriage and perhaps her own life, Polly must ferret out the submerged truth about the man she loves.
With 13 ½, Nevada Barr, New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning Anna Pigeon novels, has written a taut and terrifying psychological thriller. It carries the reader from the horrifying 1970s murder spree of a child-dubbed “Butcher Boy” by a shocked public-in Rochester, Minnesota, to Polly, the abused daughter of Mississippi “trailer trash,” to post-Katrina New Orleans.
In Jackson Square in the French Quarter a tarot card reader told Polly Deschamps she would be a success. Thirty years later, Polly is a respected professor of literature with good friends and her own home-a safe life for her and her two daughters.
Butcher Boy, released on his seventeenth birthday, shook the snow from his boots and headed south.
New Orleans, a Mecca for runaways then and now, offers sanctuary but never forgiveness.
When Polly falls in love with Marshall Marchand, a restoration architect who is helping to rebuild her adopted city, shadows of the past rise out of the poisoned ground of New Orleans as thick and deadly as the toxic waters of the flood.
Like history, some crimes are doomed to repeat themselves. Evil stays the same, only the victims' names change. As two broken pasts collide in an uncertain present, Polly is determined that her children's names will never be on that list.
With 13 ½, Nevada Barr, New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning Anna Pigeon novels, has written a taut and terrifying psychological thriller. It carries the reader from the horrifying 1970s murder spree of a child-dubbed “Butcher Boy” by a shocked public-in Rochester, Minnesota, to Polly, the abused daughter of Mississippi “trailer trash,” to post-Katrina New Orleans.
In Jackson Square in the French Quarter a tarot card reader told Polly Deschamps she would be a success. Thirty years later, Polly is a respected professor of literature with good friends and her own home-a safe life for her and her two daughters.
Butcher Boy, released on his seventeenth birthday, shook the snow from his boots and headed south.
New Orleans, a Mecca for runaways then and now, offers sanctuary but never forgiveness.
When Polly falls in love with Marshall Marchand, a restoration architect who is helping to rebuild her adopted city, shadows of the past rise out of the poisoned ground of New Orleans as thick and deadly as the toxic waters of the flood.
Like history, some crimes are doomed to repeat themselves. Evil stays the same, only the victims' names change. As two broken pasts collide in an uncertain present, Polly is determined that her children's names will never be on that list.
Editorial Reviews
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940171556334 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Brilliance Audio |
| Publication date: | 09/29/2009 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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