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Riverhead
August 2014
On Sale: August 14, 2014
363 pages
ISBN: 1594632510
EAN: 9781594632518
Kindle: B00INIYFPC
Hardcover / e-Book
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Fiction
A big, moving novel of one tight-knit Texas community and the events that alter its residentsβ lives forever. Friendswood, Texas, is a small Gulf Coast town of church suppers, oil rigs on the horizon, hurricane weather, and high school football games. When tragedy rears its head with an industrial leak that kills and sickens residents, it pulls on the common thread that runs through the community, intensifying everything. From a confused fifteen-year-old girl beset by visions, to a high school football star tormented by his actions, to a mother galvanized by the death of her teen daughter, to a morally bankrupt father trying to survive his mistakes, RenΓ© Steinke explores what happens when families are trapped in the ambiguity of historyβs misstepsβwhen the actions of a few change the lives and well-being of many. Driving the narrative powerfully forward is the suspenseful question of the fates of four Friendswood families, and Steinkeβs striking insight and empathy. Inspired in part by the town where she herself grew up, this layered, propulsive, psychologically complex story is poignant proof that extreme public events, as catastrophic as they might seem, must almost always pale in comparison to the intimate personal experiences and motivations of grief, love, lust, ambition, anxiety, and regret.
 Media BuzzWeekend Edition Sunday - August 17, 2014
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