Search results for ""author elizabeth h. winthrop""

In the wake of a family tragedy, Joan and Anders Jacobs and their two daughters arrive for the summer at their holiday home in Massachusetts, only to find that a young man has drowned in the quarry on their land - was it an accident, suicide or murder? 15-year-old Eve becomes obsessed with proving foul play, but the mystery entwines each of the Jacobs in different ways, unexpectedly helping them to come to terms with their own loss and see the path forward.

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A breakout novel by “a bitingly intelligent writer” (New York Times Book Review) set during the hours leading up to the scheduled execution of a young black man for the alleged rape of a white woman in a small Louisiana town in 1943

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As the summer begins, the Jacobs family arrive at their holiday home in Massachusetts, only to find that a truck has been driven into their water-filled quarry and a young man has drowned. It is a dreadful echo of another recent death: the suicide of Joan and Anders' eldest daughter. When details emerge of the man's identity, fifteen-year-old Eve becomes obsessed with proving that his death wasn't an accident, while her little sister unwittingly adopts his orphaned dog. Joan is more interested in tracking down the drowned man's mother, while Anders, who cannot talk about his own daughter's death, doesn't want to get involved. As they simultaneously try to adjust to their own loss and absorb this apparent tragedy, each in their own way confronts life's normal hurdles - growing up, sustaining a marriage, facing the future. Here are characters so vividly imagined and drawn with such emotional insight that they leap off the page. When the summer ends, you will not want to let them go.

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Hollis Clayton is in trouble. Still haunted by his small son's death, stalled in his writing career and over fond of the bottle, he finds himself abandoned by his wife for the summer - or, if he doesn't shape up, for good. But without his emotional anchor, Hollis continues to unravel. Besides, he's busy spying on the neighbours and sharing his meals with a stray dog. When is he going to find the time to get his life back on track?Here, in the daily rhythms of Hollis's disintegrating life, lies an evisceratingly comic portrait of suburban despair. With this deeply affecting tale of grief and renewal, Elizabeth H. Winthrop makes a striking debut.

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As another baking hot day dawns over Louisiana in 1943, a young black man wakes in a town jail to the final hours of his life: at midnight, eighteen-year-old Willie Jones will be executed by electric chair for raping a white girl - a crime some believe he did not commit. In a tale taut with mounting tension, the day unfolds hour by hour from nine points of view: Willie himself, knowing what really happened and grappling with what it means to die; his father, desperately trying to reach home with a tombstone for his son before it's too late to see him one last time; the lawyer, haunted by being forced to seek the death penalty against his convictions, his wife, who believes Willie to be innocent, and their 12-year-old son, determined to get as close as possible to the action regardless of the dangers; the priest assigned to Willie in jail; the prisoner entrusted with driving the executioner and his travelling electric chair to the place of execution; and the mother whose only son is fighting in the Far East, bent on befriending her black neighbours. In this exceptionally powerful novel, Elizabeth Winthrop explores matters of justice, racism and the death penalty in a fresh, subtle and profoundly affecting way. Her kaleidoscopic narrative allows us to inhabit the lives of her characters and see them for what they are - complex individuals, making fateful choices we might not condone, but can understand.

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