Dahlia's Gone: A Novel

" Good books do what nothing else in our lives can do-give full expression to the tender and tempestuous depths of our humanity-and "Dahlia's Gone" is a very good book indeed. There's an expansive sensibility within these pages, a fearless insistence on fusion, the author's extraordinary capacity to blend the global and provincial, the sacred and profane, the introspective and dramatic, that makes Katie Estill rare among American novelists."
-- Bob Shacochis, National Book Award-winning author "of Easy in the Islands" and "The Immaculate Invasion"
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" In this astonishingly moving novel, Katie Estill takes the pieces of a family, the pieces of a backwater town, the pieces of women's hard-bitten lives, and sews them together with a fine hand. What was broken is made whole. What cannot be made whole is redeemed. Of this we can be certain: Katie Estill is an inspired writer, this book a thing of passionate beauty."
-- Leigh Allison Wilson, Flannery O'Connor Award-Winning author of "From the Bottom Up" and "Wind: Stories"
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"The friction is deliciously unbearable until the climax, which is wholly unexpected and final."
-- "The Bloomsbury Review" on "Evening Would Find Me
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" A., ."[a] totally engaging, debut title that fully documents Katie Estill as a major literary talent, and leaves her readers looking eagerly forward to her next novel."
-- "The Midwest Book Review" on "Evening Would Find Me"
" "Written with sensuality and delicacy.... explores with poetic intensity a theme drawn from ancient tragedy."
-- Edmund White on"Evening Would Find Me"

" A promise can change a life. Even a small, casual promise extended without much thought or contemplation." So learns Sand Williams, who has returned to her childhood home in the Ozarks for a much- needed rest after years of working abroad as a journalist. She and her husband, Frank, a hydrologist who loves caves, have moved into a cabin that Sand inherited from her father on the beautiful Seven Point River. A mile upstream from Sand lives Norah Everston, and the two women couldn't be more different. The only thing they have in common is the boundary of their land, but when Norah asks Sand to look in on her children when she and her husband go traveling, Sand reluctantly agrees, because she grew up in the Ozarks believing that you helped your neighbor out.
The kids are Timothy and Dahlia, the children of Norah and Lyman by previous marriages. Lyman's daughter, Dahlia, eighteen and a winsome blonde, is working to raise funds for college, while Norah's son, Timothy, a big, handsome boy described as " "slow, " " goes to a special class in high school. The teenagers have never fully adjusted to their parents' marriage, and the family is also divided by the subject of religion and the very strict church that Norah and Timothy faithfully attend. The teenagers have never been left alone before, and Norah, who doesn't like Sand very much, has asked her to look after them for convenience sake.
"Dahlia's Gone" is the story of three remarkable women whose lives are profoundly changed by the murder of Dahlia Everston: Sand, who makes the grisly discovery;, Norah, the victim's grieving step-mother, who comes toblame Sand for the tragedy;, and Patty Callahan, who leads the investigation of Dahlia's brutal murder. Patti, the only female deputy in Weleda County, is a woman of secrets, secrets that include her intimate and influential relationship with Sand's deceased father, who was the owner and publisher of the local newspaper.
This mesmerizing narrative beautifully and suspensefully explores the aftermath of tragedy, and the process of facing the truth. In "Dahlia's Gone," Katie Estill has created brought to life three unforgettable characters whose lives intersect in both dramatic and mysterious ways. "Dahlia's Gone" looks unflinchingly at what's been lost, but in the end this is a story about redemption, the beauty of hope, and the soul-healing friendship that can be forged among women.