Limestone Wall

Description

SUMMARY: A novel about loss and healing and unexpected bonds.

KEY SELLING POINTS:

• Set at the notorious Jefferson City Prison
• By the author of The Absent Woman

THE BOOK:
Evelyn Grant, newly widowed, returns to her hometown of Jefferson City, Missouri, where she rents rooms in her old family home across the street from the Missouri State Penitentiary. Then Evelyn sets about trying to see her mother for the first time in forty years. She knows where to find her – across the street, behind the limestone wall: Mabel Grant is serving a life sentence in the penitentiary for murdering the twin babies of a neighbour. Evelyn makes the acquaintance of Roz Teal, who has befriended a condemned prisoner soon to be executed. Through Roz, Evelyn meets Ezekiel, lifetime convict, who leads Evelyn to her mother.

REVIEWS:
“Limestone Wall is a slim novel that nonetheless contains worlds upon worlds–in its wonderfully knobby, authentic characters, and in its elegant meditations on childhood, marriage, death, and the passage of time. Each page is a gift of beauty and truth. Fans of Marilynne Robinson and Paul Harding will find much to admire in Marlene Lee’s books.” Keija Parssinen, Author of The Ruins Of Us.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Marlene Lee has worked as a court reporter, teacher, college instructor, and writer. A graduate of Kansas Wesleyan University (BA), University of Kansas (MA), and Brooklyn College (MFA), she currently tutors in the Writing Center at the University of Missouri. She has published numerous stories, poems, and essays, in the Indiana Review, Descant, Orange County Illustrated, Maverick Press, Autobiography, Calyx, Other Voices, roger: a journal of literature and art and Blue Fifth Review. She won first prize in the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference Novel Contest, and first prize in the University of Kansas Poetry Contest.