Isla Morley
"Can someone make a film adaptation please?"
--Cosmopolitan UK
--Cosmopolitan UK
In the bestselling vein of Room and The Lovely Bones, ABOVE is a stunning and harrowing novel about a Kansas teenager who is abducted and locked away in an abandoned missile silo by a
survivalist who believes he is saving her from the impending
destruction of the world.
Blythe Hallowell focuses on finding a way to escape until she discovers that
she also has to deal with crushing loneliness, the terrifying
madness of her captor, and the persistent temptation to give up. Nothing, however, prepares her for the burden of having to raise
a child in confinement.
Out of fear, she pushes aside the truth about a world her son may never see for a myth that just might give meaning to his life underground. Years later, their lives are ambushed by an event at once promising and devastating. As Blythe's dream of going home hangs in the balance, she faces the ultimate choice -- between survival and freedom.
Riveting and unforgettable, ABOVE is a beautifully written and compelling tale of survival, resilience, and hope.
Winner of Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction § Finalist for Commonwealth Prize § Finalist Audie Awards § Longlisted for Sunday Times Award
Abbe Deighton is a woman who has lost her bearings. Once a child of the African plains, she is now settled in Hawaii, married to a minister, and waging her battles in the hallway of monotony. There is the leaky roof, the chafing expectations of her husband's congregation and the constant demands of motherhood. But in an instant, beginning with the skid of tires, Abbe's battlefield is transformed when her three-year-old daughter is killed, triggering in Abbe a seismic grief that will cut a swath through the landscape of her life and her identity.
Clawing its way through the strata of grief comes the memory of another tragedy, one that has been tucked away for twenty years. If Abbe is to find a way through blame and guilt, if she is to find redemption, she must confront the last summer of her youth.
It is a journey that will take her back to the continent of her childhood, bringing her face-to-face with her past, to the old witchdoctor's hut where curses were cast, secrets kept and a crime concealed.
COME SUNDAY is a novel about searching for a true homeland, family bonds torn asunder, and the unearthing of decades-old secrets.
Abbe Deighton is a woman who has lost her bearings. Once a child of the African plains, she is now settled in Hawaii, married to a minister, and waging her battles in the hallway of monotony. There is the leaky roof, the chafing expectations of her husband's congregation and the constant demands of motherhood. But in an instant, beginning with the skid of tires, Abbe's battlefield is transformed when her three-year-old daughter is killed, triggering in Abbe a seismic grief that will cut a swath through the landscape of her life and her identity.
Clawing its way through the strata of grief comes the memory of another tragedy, one that has been tucked away for twenty years. If Abbe is to find a way through blame and guilt, if she is to find redemption, she must confront the last summer of her youth.
It is a journey that will take her back to the continent of her childhood, bringing her face-to-face with her past, to the old witchdoctor's hut where curses were cast, secrets kept and a crime concealed.
COME SUNDAY is a novel about searching for a true homeland, family bonds torn asunder, and the unearthing of decades-old secrets.
Inspired by the fascinating real case of "The Blue People of Kentucky."
In 1937, there are recesses in Appalachia no outsiders have ever explored. Two government-sponsored documentarians from Cincinnati, Ohio (a writer and photographer) are dispatched to penetrate this wilderness and record what they find for President Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration.
For photographer Clay Havens, the assignment is his last chance to reboot his flagging career. So when he and his journalist partner are warned away from the remote Spooklight Holler outside of town, they set off eagerly in search of a headline story.
What they see will haunt Clay into his old age: Jubilee Buford, a woman whose skin is a shocking and unmistakable shade of blue. From this happenstance meeting between a woman isolated from society and persecuted her whole life, and a man accustomed to keeping himself at lens distance from others, comes a mesmerizing story in which the dark shades of betrayal, prejudice, fear and guilt are refracted along with incandescent hues of passion and courage.
Panning across the rich rural aesthetic of eastern Kentucky, THE LAST BLUE is a captivating love story and an intimate portrait of what it is like to be truly one of a kind.
In 1937, there are recesses in Appalachia no outsiders have ever explored. Two government-sponsored documentarians from Cincinnati, Ohio (a writer and photographer) are dispatched to penetrate this wilderness and record what they find for President Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration.
For photographer Clay Havens, the assignment is his last chance to reboot his flagging career. So when he and his journalist partner are warned away from the remote Spooklight Holler outside of town, they set off eagerly in search of a headline story.
What they see will haunt Clay into his old age: Jubilee Buford, a woman whose skin is a shocking and unmistakable shade of blue. From this happenstance meeting between a woman isolated from society and persecuted her whole life, and a man accustomed to keeping himself at lens distance from others, comes a mesmerizing story in which the dark shades of betrayal, prejudice, fear and guilt are refracted along with incandescent hues of passion and courage.
Panning across the rich rural aesthetic of eastern Kentucky, THE LAST BLUE is a captivating love story and an intimate portrait of what it is like to be truly one of a kind.
