The Pipers are a family built on optimism. Claire and Gene moved with their precocious, beguiling daughter Alice to Haeden, New York for a fresh start. In doing so, they unwittingly re-write the story of her life. Wendy White has strong roots in Haeden, a late-blooming young woman, mindful of family and home. Her story has a beginning and an end, but is missing the most important piece--the middle. What happened to Wendy White? Stacey Flynn is a reporter, both a seeker and a teller of stories. It is gritty, relentless and ultimately reckless Flynn who will chronicle Wendy White's existence from all the fragments she can find, and forge a path toward the end. But only we will ever know the whole story.
About the Author :
Cara Hoffman writes skillfully and hauntingly about women's lives, about crime and family and Gothic, rural America. She distills the essence of family into something darkly beautiful and worthy of intimate attention. She has won a New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for her work on violence and adolescents and has worked as an investigative reporter covering New York State's rural and Rust belt communities, where she wrote about environmental politics and crime.
READER BIO
Aimee Bruneau is a 2010 Audies Finalist and an actor, director, professor and student of theater. She earned her MFA in Acting from the American Conservatory Theater. Aimee has been telling tales in Seattle, Washington, for more than a decade. Additionally, she has worked for theaters in Chicago, San Francisco, Savannah, and in southern France.
Review :
One of the top ten 'First Fiction' of 2011. - Publishers Weekly
"...dark and chilling... [A] gripping novel..." - Library Journal
"Bruneau succeeds in capturing the voices of the Pipers and their daughter..." - Booklist
"[An] unusual and compelling book...Bruneau effectively builds sympathy for her characters and sustains the listener's deftly managed misapprehension about where the plot is going." - AudioFile Magazine
"...a haunting, gloomy novel that defies genre..." - NPR
"dark...eerie...potent..." - The New Yorker
"...delivers a skillful, psychologically acute tale of how violence affects a small town...constantly surprising..." - Los Angeles Times
"...a haunting suspense novel..." - Entertainment Weekly, "The Must List"
"Hoffman's writing and insight into her characters are excellent." - Casper Star-Tribune
"easily a contender for book of the year, and makes Hoffman a writer to watch in the future." - Verbicide Magazine
"a captivating tale of life and death in a small town...Hoffman's careful weaving of each storyline is seamless...outstanding." - Examiner.com
"...dark, atmospheric tale of murder in a small-town world has been likened to The Lovely Bones and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." - Stylist, "Cult Books of 2012"
"...a skillfully developed story...So Much Pretty succeeds in reaching forth and grabbing its audience in the hope of saving one girl's life, and another girl's future." - The Skinny
"So Much Pretty is everything I love in a novel - dark, fascinating, beautifully written, impossible to put down. It marks the beginning of what promises to be an indelible literary career for Cara Hoffman." - Lauren Grodstein, author of A Friend of the Family
"So Much Pretty is certain to be talked about - not merely because it is a profound meditation on both public and private violence in small-town America, but for its captivating storytelling which draws you in on a visceral level and leaves you feeling haunted, in the best of ways." - Philipp Meyer, author of American Rust
"So Much Pretty is a compelling whodunit, an unnerving portrait of just what the back of nowhere looks like, and an arresting meditation on our culture's ongoing acceptance of violence against women. It's powered by both a despairing tenderness and an unflinching rage, each of which, as the novel makes heartbreakingly clear, are more than justified." - Jim Shepard, author of Like You'd Understand Anyway
