Synopses & Reviews
A debut novelist interweaves a trio of voices-haunting, dangerous, full of longing-mysteriously linked by a shocking crime and the search to heal the past
Many long years have passed since the winter of blinding white when Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate drove across the hushed midwestern landscape and left a trail of blood and pain. So why does Lowell, a Manhattan collector of antiquities, still dream of what happened, despite his wife's best attempts to draw him back and offer comfort? And who is Susan, the teenager who appoints herself a detective, piecing together the story of the murders while wondering if she'll ever be loved like Starkweather loved his girl?
And then there's Caril Ann herself, who takes us back to relive the ride she swears she could not control. It began on the day Charlie first saw her, dangling her bare legs off the edge of a tree house. It ended outside Valentine, Nebraska, on that night when she still believed that life could somehow go back to being normal . . . '
Every so often a novel comes along that is capable of redeeming the losses it so devastatingly conveys. Disturbing, bittersweet, and lyrical, Liza Ward's Outside Valentine is a story of people torn apart by tragedy and yet, finally, transformed by love.
Review
"A gifted writer, Ward uses simple imagery to chilling effect. A dog with a broken neck hiding under the bed after its owner has been murdered and a dead schoolgirl with her skirt pulled up...are as vivid as anything filmmakers have fashioned from the same raw material." Susan Coll, The Washington Post Book World
Review
"[S]uspenseful and chilling....Ward manages to tell the tale from all sides, and astonishingly...reveals a deeply affecting story about everyone involved, including the girl who went along for the murderous ride." Hartford Courant
Review
"Liza Ward's provocative debut...delves into the lives not only of her protagonists, but also of the people related to the victims. She dissects not just the horror of these real-life crimes, but the more subtle, rippling effects on those left behind." BookPage
Review
"What Ward effectively shows is that tragedy keeps on happening. But she also holds forth the possibility that love can save people. Some people." Houston Chronicle
Review
"Outside Valentine has a slowly tightening noose of a plot....But while Charlie Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate's relationship is vivid in the reader's mind, the novel's other, quieter emotional struggle sadly pales in its glare." Elissa Schappell, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"An intricate and challenging novel that examines the inner lives of men and women swept up in a devastating American crime. Ward's portraits are harrowing, heartfelt and unforgettable." Anita Shreve, author of The Pilot's Wife
Review
"Written with confidence and grace, Outside Valentine tells an astounding story about how violence can propel us apart, yes, but how it can also bring us together in unexpected ways. Liza Ward has written an utterly gripping book." Vendela Vida, author of And Now You Can Go
Review
"Blunt, beautiful, and very scary, Outside Valentine proves that a murder doesn't end with death it just goes on and on, staining generations, tolling across decades. It's a first novel with the weight of a tenth. Liza Ward has the ears of a wolf, the eyes of an owl, and a tongue as sharp as broken glass." J. Robert Lennon, author of On the Night Plain
Review
"A swift and beautifully written first novel about the lingering effects of violence and the power of love, to heal and to destroy. With extraordinary emotional accuracy, Liza Ward tracks the echoes of a murder across three generations and several lives, bringing them together in an ending both mysterious and musical. Outside Valentine seems to know all the secrets, and to be willing to tell them. Simply an amazing debut." Kevin Canty, author of Honeymoon and other Stories and Into the Great Wide Open
Review
"Liza Ward runs a tight, thrumming line through her narrative, punching up scenes with a sharp practiced touch and bringing wise compassion to bear on the tragic events that unfold with such dark inevitability." Sven Birkerts, author of The Gutenberg Elegies and My Sky Blue Trades, a memoir
Review
"Well-written in spite of often dubious similes, the novel with its textbook ending, at once inevitable and disturbing, packs a wallop. That it was inspired by the experiences of the author's grandparents makes its premise all the more poignant." Denver Post
Review
"[A]mbitious and disturbing....Grim but not gratuitous, sad but ultimately hopeful, Ward's novel is ideal for fans of Oprah's Book Club." Library Journal
Synopsis
A debut novelist interweaves a trio of voices haunting, dangerous, full of longing mysteriously linked by a shocking crime and the search to heal the past.
Many long years have passed since the winter of blinding white when Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate drove across the hushed midwestern landscape and left a trail of blood and pain. So why does Lowell, a Manhattan collector of antiquities, still dream of what happened, despite his wife's best attempts to draw him back and offer comfort? And who is Susan, the teenager who appoints herself a detective, piecing together the story of the murders while wondering if she'll ever be loved like Starkweather loved his girl?
And then there's Caril Ann herself, who takes us back to relive the ride she swears she could not control. It began on the day Charlie first saw her, dangling her bare legs off the edge of a tree house. It ended outside Valentine, Nebraska, on that night when she still believed that life could somehow go back to being normal...
Every so often a novel comes along that is capable of redeeming the losses it so devastatingly conveys. Disturbing, bittersweet, and lyrical, Liza Ward's Outside Valentine is a story of people torn apart by tragedy and yet, finally, transformed by love.
Synopsis
Debut novelist Ward interweaves a trio of voices haunting, dangerous, and full of longing mysteriously linked by a shocking crime and the search to heal the past.
Synopsis
Liza Ward's spellbinding first novel is told from the very different points of view of three narrators mysteriously linked by a shocking crime and their efforts to heal the past. Based on the Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate murders in Nebraska in the 1950s,
Outside Valentine examines the effects of violence and the power of love as the three voices interweave and show the lingering and devastating aftershocks of murder across three generations. Mysterious and disturbing, Liza Ward's first novel is, in the words of Anita Shreve, "heartbreaking and unforgettable."
About the Author
Liza Ward was born in New York City and holds degrees from Middlebury College and the University of Montana. Her stories have been published in The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, The Antioch Review, and Agni Review. They have also been selected for the 2004 O. Henry Prize Stories and Harcourt's 2004 Best New American Voices collection. She lives in Massachusetts.
Reading Group Guide
1.
Outside Valentine is a novel told in three voices with three points of view. What are the unifying themes that tie the parts to a whole?
2. When we meet Lowell in 1991 he is a man at the crossroads whose past has caught up with him. Susan insists that he retrieve the safe-deposit box but he avoids doing so. Why has he so totally isolated himself? What prompts Lowell to reevaluate his life at this point?
3. When Susan pores over all the news items she has collected about Charlie and Caril Ann, what strikes her most is the love they share. She sees a photo where they seem all tangled up in each other. Her response is to wonder if she will ever love like that. Is Susans search for love rewarded?
4. What propels Lowell toward Susan? Does he think Susan can rescue him, and in what way? What does Susan expect to gain by saving Lowell?
5. Lowell says that he knows the murders changed his life but cannot remember who he was before. What motivates Lowell to marry Susan? He states that at the time she “was just somewhere to go.” Is Lowell capable of loving her? Of loving anyone? When Mary almost drowns at Port Saugus, he runs away. Why has he been such an absent father?
6. Like Norman Mailers Executioners Song, Ward draws a portrait of a troubled killer bound for death row. Is Charlie at all a sympathetic character? The nation was riveted to the case and seemed in favor of his execution; the warden at York where Caril Ann was confined comments that the public would be happy to see her join Charlie. Was capital punishment the right answer for his crimes?
7. When Charlie and Caril Ann first meet at the treehouse there is an instant connection and understanding. What draws them together so immediately?
8. Susans mother and Charlie both take so much work to love that they bring the whole world down around them. How are they similar?
9. One of the large issues in the novel is what people do for love. How does each of these characters behave in the face of love? What draws the women to such damaged men? Caril Ann to Charlie; Caril Anns mother to Roe; Susans mother Nils? Susan to Lowell?
10. Susan searches the Port Saugus house for clues of her mother -- where she might have gone, who she really was. Does she ever find the answers shes seeking?
11. Caril Ann always denies she did anything wrong, claiming it was all Charlie. Why didnt she try to save any of the victims? Was she guilty too? Why does she refuse to take any responsibility for the killings? Does she deserve to be forgiven?
12. Susan says that you cannot escape your past; your past becomes your childrens past -- things you dont deal with become your childrens dirty laundry. Each character is traumatized by the events set in motion by Charlie and Caril Ann; how do they go about healing themselves and their pasts?