The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters

Renowned author Timothy Schaffert's celebrated debut novel, reissued here in an entirely new paperback edition, chronicles two sisters on the cusp of womanhood as they struggle to understand their father's suicide as well their mother's abandonment of them many years earlier. On graduating from high school, the sisters are once again set adrift, this time by their grandmother who leaves them for Florida. In order to survive, and perhaps even thrive, on their path to adulthood, they must learn to reconcile their pasts and discover how to depend upon themselves as well as on each other. In a story that rises out of the spare Nebraska landscape, Schaffert delivers a redemptive tale about two young women searching for wholeness and love.

Review :
"...blithe, quirky...spirited, offbeat... Like his characters, Mr. Schaffert grew up on a farm in Nebraska and seems to have cultivated a sense of exquisite boredom mixed with wry humor ... he displays an outlook well suited to the paradoxical." - Janet Maslin, The New York Times "...boondocks-Gothic...quietly tragic...The sisters lose their childhood innocence only to acquire an adult version... As long as the sisters have each other, nothing else matters." - The Washington Post "One has to admire an author who sets his first novel in rural Nebraska. That landscape was put on the literary map a century ago by Willa Cather ... in The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters by Timothy Schaffert, a narrative both sweet and audacious unfolds, encroaching Cather's pinnacle just a bit. ... I wanted to know what becomes of these brave and funny sisters. The descriptive gifts of the author are great." - United Press International "Timothy Schaffert is a delightful and startling new voice ... [The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters] avoids even a hint of pathos while sometimes being sad, often funny, and extraordinarily seductive. This book is quite an achievement." - Robb Forman Dew "Perceptive and intelligent." - The Midwest Book Review "An inventive story and endearing characters." - Booklist "A worthy first novel ... The characters are flawed but believable, vulnerable but resilient." - The Post & Courier "Timothy Schaffert writes of connections made, connections broken, connections longed for. His writing is gritty and down to earth, and yet, he writes poetic images of powerful and painful beauty that transcend any earth-bound tether. Two sisters, powerfully joined even when far apart, move through seemingly unfathomable events, trying to make sense of their world, as it was, is, and will be. Schaffert is an estimable guide through their haunted existence." - Glenn Raucher, Literary Arts Coordinator, The Writer's Voice New York