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  • Published: 3 July 2006
  • ISBN: 9780307209863
  • Imprint: Crown
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $42.99
Categories:

The Bright Forever

A Novel



Now in paperback: A suspenseful, emotional, and expertly told story of a crime and its ripple effects on the people in a small Midwestern town in the 1970s.

A dark, harrowing novel about a nine-year-old girl's disappearance and the lasting impact it has on her close-knit community

On an evening like any other, nine-year-old Katie Mackey, daughter of the most affluent family in a small town on the plains of Indiana, sets out on her bicycle to return some library books.

This simple act is at the heart of The Bright Forever, a deeply affecting novel about the choices people make that change their lives forever. Fact, speculation, and contradiction play off one another as the details about Katie's disappearance--and about the townspeople--unfold, creating a fast-paced story that is as gripping as it is richly human. A nuanced portrayal of the complicated give and take among people struggling to maintain their humanity in the shadow of a loss, The Bright Forever is a compelling and emotional tale about the human need to know even the hardest truth.

  • Published: 3 July 2006
  • ISBN: 9780307209863
  • Imprint: Crown
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $42.99
Categories:

About the author

Lee Martin

LEE MARTIN is the award-winning author of the novel QUAKERTOWN; the memoirs FROM OUR HOUSE, which was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection in 2000, and TURNING BONES; and the short story collection THE LEAST YOU NEED TO KNOW. He has won a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, a Lawrence Foundation Award, and the Glenna Luschei Prize. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, where he teaches in the creative writing program at The Ohio State University.

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Praise for The Bright Forever

"Well-crafted, a cleanly written, artful page-turner." -San Francisco Chronicle

"A deeply traditional novel, 'literary' in the old-fashioned sense. . . . its overall tone is as soft and giving as one of mom's old blankets. . . . This is not a novel that lends itself to draconian judgments. It's true to itself." --Washington Post