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.
Publishers Weekly
Reaching beyond her successful Anna Pigeon series (Borderline, etc.), bestseller Barr comes up with the brass ring: a stand-alone psychological thriller with grit, teeth and heart. At 15, Polly Farmer escapes an alcoholic mother and a trailer-park no-future, hitchhikes to New Orleans and makes a life for herself as an English professor. Polly, divorced with two daughters, romantically intersects with handsome restoration architect Marshall Marchand—who's really Dylan Raines, who was incarcerated as the 11-year-old “Butcher Boy” who axe-murdered his parents 25 years earlier in Minnesota. As Barr artfully unfolds this mystery of wickedness and pain in eerie post-Katrina New Orleans, she tackles a multitude of societal evils, from psychiatric drug abuse to the juvenile justice system, but her central conflict, Polly's fierce determination to keep her daughters safe while trying to believe in the man she loves, makes this a terrifying, utterly convincing glimpse into the abyss. (Oct.)
Library Journal
Dylan Raines slaughtered his family with an ax when he was 11 years old; trouble is, he can't remember doing it. Richard, his surviving older brother, protects Dylan, and when the chance to relocate from Minnesota to New Orleans opens up, they head south to start anew. Divorced Tulane professor Polly Deschamps survived her own sordid childhood and has made a perfect life for her two daughters in the Big Easy. But years later, as these characters' lives intersect, a tarot card reader predicts mayhem and death. Polly's new husband exhibits troubling behavior, and his brother confuses her even more. The interspersed newspaper snippets about infamous mass killers heighten our feelings of dread and inevitability. Perhaps we understand Dylan's tortuous plight—or is something more sinister going on? Barr's first stand-alone since her 1984 debut, Bittersweet, is stunning and a true break from her Anna Pigeon series (e.g., Borderline). VERDICT Keep the lights on while reading this intense psychological thriller. The tension's so tight you'll be rethinking every motive and clue up to the finale. Much like Nancy Pickard in The Virgin of Small Plains, Barr forces us to look beyond the obvious to the hidden evils we may have overlooked.—Teresa L. Jacobsen, Solano Cty. Lib., Fairfield, CA
