Synopses & Reviews
Can violence and its legacy ever be absolved? The dark and thrilling new Leslie Stone novel from Karen Novak.
When the body of an elderly man is found naked, frozen to death on the grounds of an abandoned petting zoo near where private investigator Leslie Stone lives with her family, the discovery triggers what Leslie calls the "haunted amusement park" of her mind. Voices and apparitions she knows to be hallucinatory disrupt her waking world. And she is unable to forget that the old man has left behind what seems like a riddle to be solved: an odd drawing and a children's poem with a shifting meaning, titled "The Wilderness."
Compelled to find out what happened, Leslie finds her search interlacing with that of investigative journalist Sophia Mallory, who is tracing her personal path through the historical tragedy of slavery and its aftermath. Together they uncover a pattern of institutionalized violence so brutal, so inexplicable, that it resembles a curse. As "The Wilderness" leads each woman deeper into the past, it also leads them deeper into their own psyches, forcing them to question their motives for solving a mystery which threatens to destroy the lives of everyone they love.
Review
"Novak is a spiral thinker and an imaginative storyteller, so while the dense narrative is apt to wander off like a child picking berries in the woods, individual scenes of horror stand their ground with the frightful intensity of a bad dream." Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Although there are gothic oddities aplenty in Stone's world, it's in the rather mundane details of her deteriorating life that Novak really excels....[A] barely engaging story about a less-than-interesting obsessive..." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
When the body of an elderly man is found at an abandoned petting zoo, along with an odd drawing and a poem titled "The Wilderness," Leslie Stone finds her search for answers interlacing with that of journalist Sophia Mallory. The investigation leads each woman deeper into the past.
About the Author
Karen Novak is the author of two other Leslie Stone novels, File Mile House and Innocence, as well as Ordinary Monsters. She lives in Mason, Ohio.
CITATION: "Novak's novel.fascinates with its story of a woman's single-minded obsession."(Publishers Weekly)