by T. Greenwood
Outstanding Praise for the Novels of T. Greenwood
Nearer Than the Sky
“Greenwood is an assured guide through this strange territory; she has a lush, evocative style.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“T. Greenwood writes with grace and compassion about loyalty and betrayal, love and redemption in this totally absorbing novel about daughters and mothers.”
—Ursula Hegi, author of Stones from the River
“A lyrical investigation into the unreliability and elusiveness of memory centers Greenwood’s second novel. . . . The kaleidoscopic heart of the story is rich with evocative details about its heroine’s inner life.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Compelling . . . Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal
“Doesn’t disappoint. A complicated story of love and abuse told with a directness and intensity that packs a lightning charge.”
—Booklist
“Nearer Than the Sky is a remarkable portrait of resilience. With clarity and painful precision, T. Greenwood probes the dark history of Indie’s family.”
—Rene Steinke, author of The Fires and Holy Skirts
“Greenwood’s writing is lyrical and original. There is warmth and even humor and love. Her representation of MSBP is meticulous.”
—San Diego Union-Tribune
“Deft handling of a difficult and painful subject . . . compelling.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Potent . . . Greenwood’s clear-eyed prose takes the stuff of tabloid television and lends it humanity.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“T. Greenwood brings stunning psychological richness and authenticity to Nearer Than the Sky. Hers is the very first work of fiction to accurately address factitious disorders and Munchausen by proxy—the curious, complex, and dramatic phenomena in which people falsify illness to meet their own deep emotional needs.”
—Marc D. Feldman, M.D., author of Patient or Pretender and Playing Sick?: Untangling the Web of Munchausen Syndrome, Munchausen by Proxy, Malingering, and Factitious Disorder, and co-author of Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood
This Glittering World
“In This Glittering World, T. Greenwood demonstrates once again that she is a poet and storyteller of unique gifts, not the least of which is a wise and compassionate heart.”
—Drusilla Campbell, author of The Good Sister and Blood Orange
“T. Greenwood’s novel This Glittering World is swift, stark, calamitous. Her characters, their backs against the wall, confront those difficult moments that will define them and Greenwood paints these troubled lives with attention, compassion and hope. Through it all, we are caught on the dangerous fault lines of a culturally torn northern Arizona, where the small city of Flagstaff butts up against the expansive Navajo Reservation and the divide between the two becomes manifest. As this novel about family, friendship, and allegiance swirls towards its tumultuous climax, This Glittering World asks us how it is that people sometimes choose to turn toward redemption, and sometimes choose its opposite—how it is, finally, that we become the people we become.”
—Jerry Gabriel, author of Drowned Boy and winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction
“Stark, taut, and superbly written, this dark tale brims with glimpses of the Southwest and scenes of violence, gruesome but not gratuitous. This haunting look at a fractured family is certain to please readers of literary suspense.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Greenwood’s prose is beautiful. Her writing voice is simple but emotional.”
—Romantic Times Book Reviews
Undressing the Moon
“This beautiful story, eloquently told, demands attention.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Greenwood has skillfully managed to create a novel with unforgettable characters, finely honed descriptions, and beautiful imagery.”
—Book Street USA
“A lyrical, delicately affecting tale.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Rarely has a writer rendered such highly charged topics . . . to so wrenching, yet so beautifully understated, an effect. . . . T. Greenwood takes on risky subject matter, handling her volatile topics with admirable restraint. . . . Ultimately more about life than death, Undressing the Moon beautifully elucidates the human capacity to maintain grace under unrelenting fire.”
—The Los Angeles Times
The Hungry Season
“This compelling study of a family in need of rescue is very effective, owing to Greenwood’s eloquent, exquisite word artistry and her knack for developing subtle, suspenseful scenes. . . . Greenwood’s sensitive and gripping examination of a family in crisis is real, complex, and anything but formulaic.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“A deeply psychological read.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Can there be life after tragedy? How do you live with the loss of a child, let alone the separation emotionally from all your loved ones? T. Greenwood with beautiful prose poses this question while delving into the psyches of a successful man, his wife, and his son. . . . This is a wonderful story, engaging from the beginning, that gets better with every chapter.”
—The Washington Times
Two Rivers
“From the moment the train derails in the town of Two Rivers, I was hooked. Who is this mysterious young stranger named Maggie, and what is she running from? In Two Rivers, T. Greenwood weaves a haunting story in which the sins of the past threaten to destroy the fragile equilibrium of the present. Ripe with surprising twists and heart-breakingly real characters, Two Rivers is a remarkable and complex look at race and forgiveness in small-town America.”
—Michelle Richmond, New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Fog and No One You Know
“Two Rivers is a convergence of tales, a reminder that the past never washes away, and yet, in T. Greenwood’s delicate handling of time gone and time to come, love and forgiveness wait on the other side of what life does to us and what we do to it. This novel is a sensitive and suspenseful portrayal of family and the ties that bind.”
—Lee Martin, author of The Bright Forever and River of Heaven
“The premise of Two Rivers is alluring: the very morning a deadly train derailment upsets the balance of a sleepy Vermont town, a mysterious girl shows up on Harper Montgomery’s doorstep, forcing him to dredge up a lifetime of memories—from his blissful, indelible childhood to his lonely, contemporary existence. Most of all, he must look long and hard at that terrible night twelve years ago, when everything he held dear was taken from him, and he, in turn, took back. T. Greenwood’s novel is full of love, betrayal, lost hopes, and a burning question: is it ever too late to find redemption?”
—Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, author of The Effects of Light and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize–winning Set Me Free
“Greenwood is a writer of subtle strength, evoking small-town life beautifully while spreading out the map of Harper’s life, finding light in the darkest of stories.”
—Publishers Weekly
“T. Greenwood’s writing shimmers and sings as she braids together past, present, and the events of one desperate day. I ached for Harper in all of his longing, guilt, grief, and vast, abiding love, and I rejoiced at his final, hard-won shot at redemption.”
—Marisa de los Santos, New York Times bestselling author of Belong to Me and Love Walked In
“Two Rivers is a stark, haunting story of redemption and salvation. T. Greenwood portrays a world of beauty and peace that, once disturbed, reverberates with searing pain and inescapable consequences; this is a
story of a man who struggles with the deepest, darkest parts of his soul, and is able to fight his way to the surface to breathe again. But also—maybe more so—it is the story of a man who learns the true meaning of family: When I am with you, I am home. A memorable, powerful work.”
—Garth Stein, New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain
“A complex tale of guilt, remorse, revenge, and forgiveness.... Convincing . . . Interesting . . .”
—Library Journal
“In the tradition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird , T. Greenwood’s Two Rivers is a wonderfully distinctive American novel, abounding with memorable characters, unusual lore and history, dark family secrets, and love of life. Two Rivers is the story that people want to read: the one they have never read before.”
—Howard Frank Mosher, author of Walking to Gatlinburg
“Two Rivers is a dark and lovely elegy, filled with heartbreak that turns itself into hope and forgiveness. I felt so moved by this luminous novel.”
—Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author
“Two Rivers is reminiscent of Thornton Wilder, with its quiet New England town shadowed by tragedy, and of Sherwood Anderson, with its sense of desperate loneliness and regret.... It’s to Greenwood’s credit that she answers her novel’s mysteries in ways that are believable, that make you feel the sadness that informs her characters’ lives.”
—Bookpage
BOOKS BY T. GREENWOOD
This Glittering World
The Hungry Season
Two Rivers
Undressing the Moon
Nearer Than the Sky
Breathing Water
NEARER THAN
the SKY
T . Greenwood
KENSINGTON BOOKS
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Praise
BOOKS BY T. GREENWOOD
Title Page
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Epigraph
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
Discussion Questions
Copyright Page
For Mom, Dad, and K.K.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing this novel was, at times, like being caught barefoot in a storm. For umbrellas and other shelters, I’d like to thank my family, the Stewart family, and the Sherwood Anderson Foundation. For making me weather the storm and examine the thunder, my gratitude to Lon deMatties, Nicole Norum, Christy Fletcher, and Lori Applebaum. For showing me the break in the clouds, my appreciation to Joe Veltre and Erika Fad. And for teaching me how to dance in the puddles, my always to Patrick.
The farthest Thunder that I heard
Was nearer than the Sky
And rumbles still, though torrid Noons
Have lain their missiles by—
The Lightning that preceded it
Struck no one but myself—
But I would not exchange the Bolt
For all the rest of Life—
—EMILY DICKINSON (from poem 1581)
ONE
I understand lightning. I am not afraid of the rumble, gentle as an empty stomach but powerful enough to shake the ground beneath my feet. I’m not afraid when the sky opens up and blinds my eyes with rain. And when its cold white fingers reach down, looking for someone to touch, I barely shudder anymore. I have an agreement with the sky. An understanding.
It happened when my mother ran back inside the Foodmart with my baby sister, Lily, on her hip. She’d forgotten to buy baby aspirin and Lily had a fever. I was in the shopping cart; at four years old I was still small enough to fit in the front basket with my mother’s purse. She parked me and the groceries next to our orange Chevy Nova and said, “Indie, honey, I’ll be right back. Don’t you move.” As she hurried back across the parking lot, I busied myself with a package of cookies I found poking up from one of the bags. I remember they had chocolate stripes and holes in the middle I could fit my thumbs through. The chocolate melted on my hands. It was 1970, August, and our first summer in the mountains of northern Arizona. We didn’t know then about the monsoons.
I can only imagine what the other Foodmart shoppers must have thought about me out there in the parking lot like any other bag of groceries. No different from an abandoned carton of ice cream, cardboard growing soggy in the sun. Maybe if someone had paid more attention then it would have stopped with this. If someone had wheeled me into the Foodmart, down the aisle where my mother must have stood browsing the shelves of medicine as if the bottles were magazines she might like to read, then maybe she would have realized that you don’t leave four-year-old babies in shopping carts in parking lots. Not even when your youngest has the pink raspberry flush of a fever.
But no one did. After the electric doors closed behind her clean white heels, I sat eating cookies while the other Foodmart customers bustled about opening trunks and wiping the crusty noses of their own children. Every now and then one of them would notice me and smile, probably at the chocolate mess I’d made, but not one person looked for my mother. They must have thought she was inside the Nova somewhere, preparing the car seat or looking for a lost toy.
I knew she would come back. I wasn’t afraid of that. I do remember the sudden chill in the air, though, and the long shadows that fell across the parking lot as storm clouds moved across the sky. I remember the sound of shopping-cart wheels moving quickly across the pavement, and the first few drops of rain on my face.
I must have eaten five or six of those cookies, each one growing soggier and soggier in the drizzle. I remember the way my hair tasted. The way the rain beaded up on my bare arms. The smell of wet pavement.
The first rumbles of thunder could have just been my stomach. It could have been hunger instead of a threat from the sky. But then the thunder rumbled again. Louder this time. Insistent. But it wasn’t until the sky exploded, threatening and angry, until it opened up and the rain came down in sharp slivers, soaking the brown paper bags and the cookie in my hand, that I started to feel afraid. The next crack of thunder made the shopping cart roll a little, and I felt panic for the first time, the dull thudding of my heart, the heat rising to my ears, as I looked toward the doors of the Foodmart in the distance.
Every time the doors opened, I expected to see her. But it was only a Foodmart cashier in a red apron, a lady with a yellow umbrella opening above her like butterfly wings, a man with a long gray beard and a bag brimming with green leaves. And then, just as the heat in my ears started to bring tears, the glass doors opened up again, and I saw my mother in her crisp polka-dot sundress and Lily still safely nestled on her hip.
“Ma,” I cried. Relief like cool rain.
She stood in the doorway, not moving. Not coming. I watched her struggle with the baby aspirin bottle, and the soft puff of cotton inside. Through the rain, I watched her put the tiny orange pill on Lily’s tongue. Watched Lily shake her head. Tighten her lips over my mother’s finger. I watched her kiss Lily’s head, brush her white-blond curls out of her eyes, and adjust her position on her hip.
Thunder rolled through my body, rolled under my skin like waves. She looked up from Lily then and remembered me.
What happened next lingers in my memory like an electric current that refuses to leave the body. The details circulate from fingertips to fingertips, toe to nose to toe.
The thunder cracked again; it sounded like a slap. Like a giant hand hitting skin. I watched my mother’s steps quicken and then I put my hands up to my ears and closed my eyes. One . . . two . . . three. I imagined I was counting my mother’s steps toward me. Four . . . five and I opened my eyes.
Everything was white. Metallic and cold. My skin felt like it had been stung by a thousand bees. And my heart was suddenly still. No beating, only buzzing. Only the hum of an electric lullaby.
When I could see
again, I realized that I was no longer in the shopping cart. I was lying facedown on the hood of the Nova, staring down at the spilled groceries on the ground. At a hundred pink tablets of baby aspirin, at the polka dots of my mother’s dress. The shopping cart was in the next parking space, and glowing red.
The rain wasn’t coming down so hard anymore. But I was cold, freezing cold, and I couldn’t hear anything except for the buzzing of my body. When my mother’s free hand found me, I shrank away from her touch. Her wide blue eyes grew wider, and Lily cried. When she finally spoke, her words tasted like sour milk. And Lily’s cries were the bitter of unripe berries.
They say that two things can happen to you if you are struck by lightning. The first is that you will die. The second is that you won’t die and that you will be left with few (if any) injuries, no lingering symptoms or souvenirs from your encounter. But even now, so many years later, I can’t hear well with my left ear, and with the other one I can still taste sounds. Music and wind. Voices and lies.