by Chris Cander
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Mar 2015
400 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Set in a small coal-mining town, a debut novel full of secrets, love, betrayal, and suspicious accidents, where Catholicism casts a long shadow and two courageous women make choices that will challenge our own moral convictions.
One morning in Verra, a town nestled into the hillsides of West Virginia, the young Myrthen Bergmann is playing tug-of-war with her twin, when her sister is killed. Unable to accept her own guilt, Myrthen excludes herself from all forms of friendship and affection and begins a twisted, haunted life dedicated to God. Meanwhile, her neighbor Alta Krol longs to be an artist even as her days are taken up caring for her widowed father and siblings. Everything changes when Myrthen marries the man Alta loves. Fourteen years later, we meet Lidia, a teenage girl in the same town, and her precocious son, Gabriel. When Gabriel starts telling eerily prescient stories that hint at Verra's long-buried secrets, it's not long before the townspeople begin to suspect that the boy harbors evil spirits - an irresistible state of affairs for Myrthen and her obsession with salvation.
"Starred Review. A distinctive novel that sublimely measures the distressed though determined heartbeat of a small mountain community." - Kirkus
"Cander's exploration of ... interpersonal dynamics is encumbered by cliché, inconsistencies of structure and character, and an awkwardly rigid chronological frame, but she admirably captures the lack of choice that men and women have in rural West Virginia." - Publishers Weekly
"Although Mythren's narrative turns a bit too gothic, Cander rewards the reader with Alta and Lidia, well-developed, believable characters whose mental fortitude and capacity to love linger in the reader's mind long after the last page." - Booklist
"Sometimes fiction is so good, so authentic, and the storyteller so convincing, that it just feels true. Whisper Hollow is one of those books. I'm blown away, honestly. Chris Cander has created characters with immortal souls." - Jamie Ford, New York Times best-selling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
This information about Whisper Hollow was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Chris Cander is a storyteller with many outlets: writing novels, children's books, articles, essays, and screenplays, and teaching for Houston-based Writers in the Schools (WITS), which engages children in the pleasure and power of reading and writing. She well knows that the pen is mightier than the sword, but she's willing to wield one of those, too. A former fitness competitor and model, she currently holds a second dan in taekwondo.
Chris is a member of of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, the Author's Guild, and MENSA. She lives with her husband and children in Houston, Texas.
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