Synopses & Reviews
A taut, complex psychological thriller from the author of The Doctor's Wife Like The Doctor's Wife - which The Boston Globe called "a compelling read"-Somebody Else's Daughter is a literary page-turner peopled with fascinating and disturbing characters. In the idyllic Berkshires, at the prestigious Pioneer School, there are dark secrets that threaten to come to light. Willa Golding, a student, has been brought up by her adoptive parents in elegant prosperity, but they have fled a mysterious and shameful past. Her biological father, a failing writer and former drug addict, needs to see the daughter he abandoned, and so he gains a teaching position at the school. A feminist sculptor initiates a reckless affair, the Pioneer students live in a world to which adults turn a blind eye, and the headmaster's wife is busy keeping her husband's current indiscretions well hidden. Building to a breathtaking collision between two fathers-biological and adoptive, past and present- Somebody Else's Daughter is both a suspenseful thriller and a probing study of richly conflicted characters in emotional turmoil.
Review
"Students, parents, teachers, townies:
Somebody Else's Daughter is a deft balancing act of taut plot and richly drawn characters struggling to find their moral centers as they grope in the dark for the transformative power of love. I didn't so much read this novel as devour it. Brundage is a storyteller supreme."
-- Wally Lamb, author of I Know This Much Is True and The Hour I First Believed
"Elizabeth Brundage is a brilliant novelist with an unfailing eye for the detail or word that will make a moment resonate and expand in the mind. It's what every great dramatist has in abundance. This new book is a riveting examination of how the past haunts the present, but beyond that, it is a relentless and powerful study of evil--of the forces that are loosed in our all too human attempts to love each other and find love. It is very moving and completely involving and I couldn't put it down. You won't be able to, either."
-Richard Bausch
Review
"[A] deft balancing act of taut plot and richly drawn characters. . .Brundage is a storyteller supreme."
-Wally Lamb
"Riveting...very moving and completely involving. . . Brundage is a brilliant novelist."
-Richard Bausch
"Brundage has a penchant for turning topical subjects into gripping novels...Sex, drugs, violence and murder are all in the Brundage mix."
-The Washington Post
"[A] well-turned thriller. . . Brundage writes with startling clarity."
-St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"A taut tale of suspense rounded out with sharp observations on parenting, adoption and the fraught business of keeping up appearances."
-New York Observer
Synopsis
A psychological thriller of secrets, dark motives, and an adoption buried in the past At the center of Elizabeth Brundages new novel lies an adoption under stressed and tragic circumstances. Willa, brought up in elegant prosperity, is now a student at the prestigious Pioneer School. But her biological father, a failing writer and former drug addict, cant live with himself without seeing her again.
In this idyllic Berkshires landscape, Willas adoptive parents have fled a mysterious past; a feminist sculptor initiates a reckless affair; teenagers live in a world to which adults turn a blind eye; and the headmasters wife is busy keeping her husbands disastrous history and current indiscretions well hidden. The culmination of these forces is the collision of two very different fathersbiological and adoptiveand a villain whose ends and means slowly unfold with the help, witting and unwitting, of all around him. Somebody Elses Daughter delivers an electric, suspenseful tale of richly conflicted characters and the disturbed landscape of the American psyche.
About the Author
Elizabeth Brundage is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she earned an MFA in fiction and a James Michener award. Her short fiction has been published in the Greensboro Review, Witness Magazine, and New Letters, and she contributed to the anthology Thicker Than Blood: I’ve Always Meant to Tell You, Letters to Our Mothers.