On a blustery April day, the quiet, rather private wife of
a doctor discovers that her husband has been having an
affair. Moments later, driving along a winding country
road and distracted perhaps by her own thoughts, perhaps
blinded by sunlight, she fails to see sixty-one-year-old
Ruth Mitchell up ahead, riding her bicycle. She hits her,
killing her instantly. And drives away.
The hit-and-
run driver is never found. But the doctorβs wife,
horrified by what she has done, begins to unravel. Soon
she turns her attention to Ruthβs bereaved husband, a man
staggering sleeplessly through each night, as unhinged by
grief as the killer is by guilt.
Arthur Mitchell
does not realize at first that someone has begun watching
him through his windows, worrying over his disheveled
appearance, his increasingly chaotic home. And when at
last she steps through his doorway, secretly at first,
then more boldly, he is ready to believe that, for reasons
beyond his understanding, his wife has somehow been
returned to himβ¦.
A story of loss, lies, and
wrongdoing, astonishingly complex and ingeniously
inventive, The Night Following is also a
love story and the extraordinarily moving tale of a
killerβs journey from the shadows into the light. It
confirms the mastery of a writer who is both tender and
unflinching in her examination of human frailtyβand of the
shattering repercussions of deception.
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