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by Kristin Fields
A harrowing debut novel of a tragic disappearance and one sister's journey through the trauma that has shaped her life.
For eleven-year-old Esme, ballet is everything―until her four-year-old sister, Lily, vanishes without a trace and nothing is certain anymore. People Esme has known her whole life suddenly become suspects, each new one hitting closer to home than the last.
Unable to cope, Esme escapes the nightmare that is her new reality when she receives an invitation to join an elite ballet academy in San Francisco. Desperate to leave behind her chaotic, broken family and the mystery surrounding Lily's disappearance, Esme accepts.
Eight years later, Esme is up for her big break: her first principal role in Paris. But a call from her older sister shatters the protective world she has built for herself, forcing her to revisit the tragedy she's run from for so long. Will her family finally have the answers they've been waiting for? And can Esme confront the pain that shaped her childhood, or will the darkness follow her into the spotlight?
"Kristin Fields has written a propulsive first novel, the story unspooling around the disappearance of a child and the misery this loss inflicts. With heartbreaking clarity, the narrator realizes that to save herself she must leave the albatross of her broken family. But the past, as we know, has a way of haunting us no matter how hard we try to escape. Fields brings new light and language to the relentlessly terrifying and ever-present subject of lost children and the horrifying fallout that, here, grips the reader from start to finish." —Martha McPhee, Author of Bright Angel Time and Dear Money
"Kristin Fields masterfully explores the personal disappearances that take place inside each of her characters when the youngest child in the family goes missing in an unsolved abduction. Fields's understanding of the power of art and movement to transport and comfort, along with her empathy for a sister who otherwise feels powerless as her own life is changed forever by unanswered fears, questions and guilt, draws the reader along to a complex conclusion. Heartbreaking and compelling, A Lily in the Light is a revelation of what it is to lose yourself and come home again." —Kimberly Brock, award-winning author of The River Witch
This information about A Lily in the Light 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.
Kristin Fields grew up in Queens, which she likes to think of as a small town next to a big city. Fields studied writing at Hofstra University, where she received the Eugene Schneider Fiction Award. After college, Fields found herself working on a historic farm, teaching high school English, and designing museum education programs. She is currently leading an initiative to bring gardens to New York City public schools. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband.
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