Crooked River: A Novel
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
Full of emotion and suspense, Crooked River is an inventive and atmospheric story about family and friendship, good and evil, secrets and lies, grief and forgiveness
Where should I start? With Mom's funeral? Or a week earlier on the Fourth of July, the day she died? Or should I skip all that stuff and get straight to the part where Ollie and I just wanted to go swimming and pretend our lives were ordinary again, but when we got down to the river we found another dead woman instead?
Still grieving over the sudden death of their mother, fifteen-year-old Sam McAlister and her ten-year-old sister, Ollie, move from the comforts of Eugene to rural Oregon to live in a meadow in a teepee under the stars with Bear, their reclusive beekeeper father. But soon after they arrive in Terrebone, a young woman is found dead floating in Crooked River and the police arrest their eccentric father for the murder.
He is not evil. I am not good.
We are the same: broken and put back together again.
Sam knows that Bear is not a killer, even though the evidence points to his guilt—including information that she and Ollie have uncovered. Filled with remorse and refusing to accept that her father could have hurt anyone, Sam embarks on a desperate hunt to save him and keep her damaged family together. They had mysteriously lost Bear once before and Sam is terrified they will lose him again. Only this time they won't ever get him back. She needs Ollie to help her, but Ollie has not spoken a word since their mother's death.
I see things no one else does.
I see them there and wish I didn't. I want to tell and I can't.
Ollie, too, knows that Bear is innocent. The Shimmering have told her so. One followed her home from her mom's funeral and continues to hover, a spectrum of colors—pink and rose red, sky blue and honey gold. Now another, coiled and hissing, is following Sam. Both spirits warn Ollie: the real killer is out there, waiting. Somehow, she must warn her sister. But Ollie worries that if she tries to speak—even to write—the Shimmering will slip inside her, take control, and never leave.
Sam and Ollie must find the truth quickly—a search that will lead them to unexpected secrets and terrible lies—because the danger is closer to them than either girl knows.
Told in Sam's and Ollie's vibrant voices, Crooked River is a family story, a coming-of-age story, a ghost story, and a psychological mystery as haunting as the best Southern gothic fiction that will touch your heart and grip you until the final page.
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Valerie Geary. (2014). Crooked River: A Novel. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Valerie Geary. 2014. Crooked River: A Novel. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Valerie Geary, Crooked River: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2014.
MLA Citation (style guide)Valerie Geary. Crooked River: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2014.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 1 | 1 |
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Valerie Geary is the author of Crooked River, a finalist for the Ken Kesey Award. Her short stories have been published in The Rumpus and Day One. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her family.
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Full of emotion and suspense, Crooked River is an inventive and atmospheric story about family and friendship, good and evil, secrets and lies, grief and forgiveness
Where should I start? With Mom's funeral? Or a week earlier on the Fourth of July, the day she died? Or should I skip all that stuff and get straight to the part where Ollie and I just wanted to go swimming and pretend our lives were ordinary again, but when we got down to the river we found another dead woman instead?
Still grieving over the sudden death of their mother, fifteen-year-old Sam McAlister and her ten-year-old sister, Ollie, move from the comforts of Eugene to rural Oregon to live in a meadow in a teepee under the stars with Bear, their reclusive beekeeper father. But soon after they arrive in Terrebone, a young woman is found dead floating in Crooked River and the police arrest their eccentric father for the murder.
He is not evil. I am not good.
We are the same: broken and put back together again.
Sam knows that Bear is not a killer, even though the evidence points to his guilt—including information that she and Ollie have uncovered. Filled with remorse and refusing to accept that her father could have hurt anyone, Sam embarks on a desperate hunt to save him and keep her damaged family together. They had mysteriously lost Bear once before and Sam is terrified they will lose him again. Only this time they won't ever get him back. She needs Ollie to help her, but Ollie has not spoken a word since their mother's death.
I see things no one else does.
I see them there and wish I didn't. I want to tell and I can't.
Ollie, too, knows that Bear is innocent. The Shimmering have told her so. One followed her home from her mom's funeral and continues to hover, a spectrum of colors—pink and rose red, sky blue and honey gold. Now another, coiled and hissing, is following Sam. Both spirits warn Ollie: the real killer is out there, waiting. Somehow, she must warn her sister. But Ollie worries that if she tries to speak—even to write—the Shimmering will slip inside her, take control, and never leave.
Sam and Ollie must find the truth quickly—a search that will lead them to unexpected secrets and terrible lies—because the danger is closer to them than either girl knows.
Told in Sam's and Ollie's vibrant voices, Crooked River is a family story, a coming-of-age story, a ghost story, and a psychological mystery as haunting as the best Southern gothic fiction that will touch your heart and grip you until the final page.
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"From its gruesome first image through its three hundred taut pages—Valerie Geary's novel is a well-conceived, psychologically dense thrill-ride. At turns surprising and imaginative, this book is nearly impossible to put down." — Pauls Toutonghi, Author of RED WEATHER and EVEL KNIEVEL DAYS
"CROOKED RIVER is a novel coursing with secrets and unasked questions....This novel is a literary thriller and a psychological study of the effects of loss, but most importantly, it's a damn fine book." — Wiley Cash, New York TImes bestselling author of A LAND MORE KIND THAN HOME and THIS DARK ROAD TO MERCY
"An absorbing mystery." — Library Journal
"Crooked River is an ambitious debut with a beautiful soul. Geary's dark pen is lyrical and tender boasting clever dialogue and provocative prose." — Lisa O'Donnell, bestselling author of THE DEATH OF BEES
"The narrative skill displayed is impressive... readers will have a hard time putting this one down." — Booklist
"[A] swift and beguiling read... [Sam] is finely drawn, an update on Harper Lee's Scout." — BookPage
"Crooked River is as much a coming-of-age novel as it is a well-paced mystery...Geary takes teenage Sam through a looking-glass and then pulls her back with an adult's sense of loyalty and compassion—a journey equally worthwhile for all of us." — Shelf Awareness
"[Valerie Geary] captures her readers at once and doesn't let them go." — Oklahoma City Oklahoman
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July 1, 2014
Sam's mother has recently died and she's trying to hold on to some sense of normality after she and her selectively mute younger sister Ollie move to rural Oregon to live with their societal-dropout, tent-dwelling father. Sam is exhausted with trying to care for Ollie, who communicates by pointing at apt sentences in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The reader knows that Ollie is pursued everywhere by "shimmering" ghosts whose voices, she fears, will come out if she tries to talk. Then there's a murder that's close to home in every sense of the phrase, and Sam fears that all that is familiar to her, shaky though it is, will come asunder. Geary's debut novel, narrated in alternating chapters by the sisters, is more enigmatic than frightening, and the apparitions add a compelling twist to what's already an absorbing mystery. VERDICT This will appeal to those who enjoyed Wiley Cash's more literary A Land More Kind Than Home, as it will make the reader feel for the young protagonists who are buffeted by forces over which they have no control, and whose tenderness comes across in their care for each other and fear for their family. [See Prepub Alert, 4/14/14.]--Henrietta Verma, Library Journal
Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Where should I start? With Mom's funeral? Or a week earlier on the Fourth of July, the day she died? Or should I skip all that stuff and get straight to the part where Ollie and I just wanted to go swimming and pretend our lives were ordinary again, but when we got down to the river we found another dead woman instead?
Still grieving over the sudden death of their mother, fifteen-year-old Sam McAlister and her ten-year-old sister, Ollie, move from the comforts of Eugene to rural Oregon to live in a meadow in a teepee under the stars with Bear, their reclusive beekeeper father. But soon after they arrive in Terrebone, a young woman is found dead floating in Crooked River and the police arrest their eccentric father for the murder.
He is not evil. I am not good.
We are...
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