Sister

Description

In her remarkable second novel, A. Manette Ansay tells the story of Abigail Schiller, a girl who lives a seemingly normal childhood in a small Catholic community in Wisconsin. But that life is shattered when her younger brother Sam, unable to live up to his father's rigid ideas of masculinity, mysteriously vanishes at the age of seventeen. Haunted by both Sam's disappearance and memories of violence that her mother denies, Abby finds herself increasingly unable to reconcile her own life with the wishes of her family and the Catholic Church. Now thirty years old and expecting her first child, Abby realizes the past she tried to run from holds the key to her own future and to that of her child. She embarks on an emotional journey that retraces her brother's descent into feelings of worthlessness and a world of drug abuse, a journey that contradicts everything she once believed about her family and herself. Sister is the poignant story of a woman's search for memory and meaning, the reconciliation of present and past within the complicated fabric of family. With grace and compassion, A. Manette Ansay spins hard-won triumph out of tragedy, testifying to the indelibility of the human spirit. Part One: Sister......Page 9 Title Page......Page 3 Dedication Page......Page 4 Contents......Page 5 Epigraph Page......Page 7 Part Two: Distance......Page 35 Part Three: Loison Creek......Page 113 Part Four: Back by Dark......Page 149 Part Five: Grace......Page 199 Acknowledgments......Page 237 About the Author......Page 238 Praise......Page 239 Other Avon Books by A. Manette Ansay......Page 240 Copyright Notice......Page 241 About the Publisher......Page 242