| Product Summary | | Format: Hardcover | | ISBN: 9780743454544 | | Publisher: Pocket Books | | Publish Date: 4/10/2007 | | Buy.com Sku: 39864600 | | Item#: BVQYL6 | | Dimensions (in Inches) 9.5H x 6.75L x 1.5T | | Pages: 448 |
|
|
|
| | | From the bestselling author of "My Sister's Keeper" and "Second Glance" comes the shocking story of a woman caught between a past she can not recall and the life she cannot lead without it.
Annotation:
Delia Hopkins is living a placid enough life in New Hampshire with her little daughter, and is about to finally marry the child's father, Eric, a lawyer. Then, suddenly Delia's life bursts wide open: her adored father, Andrew, is arrested for kidnapping--a crime that goes back 28 years, to when Delia was four years old. It was Delia herself whom her father kidnapped, whisking her away from the drunken mother Delia thought had died years ago. This bizarre, long-held secret explains the odd fragments of memory Delia has been struggling to identify. With Eric enlisted as Andrew's lawyer, and her old friend Fitz (who is in love with her) covering the case for the local paper, Delia finds herself at the center of a tangled web of events, including a reunion with her Mexican mother, now a recovered alcoholic and a revered healer. The story is told from several points of view as the many fascinating layers of the story are revealed.
| PraiseKirkus
"[An] expertly devised search-and-rescue tale....An experienced novelist takes her sweet time to rich rewards: overall, an affecting saga, nicely handled." 01/01/2005Publishers Weekly
"Picoult weaves together plot and characterization in a landscape that is fleshed out in rich, journalistic detail, so that readers will come away with intriguing questions rather than pat answers." 02/07/2005 |
| Author Bio| Jodi Picoult | | Jodi Picoult (pronounced pee-KOE) is a remarkably prolific writer of riveting topical fiction, whose books became a mainstay on bestseller lists worldwide during the first decade of the 21st century. Picoult was born (in 1966) and raised on Long Island in New York, and spent her high school years in New Hampshire before attending Princeton University. She certainly made the most of her undergraduate years: she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, had her first two short stories published in a major magazine, and graduated magna cum laude. Perhaps more importantly, Picoult fell in love with a fellow student named Tim van Leer, who became her husband and the father of her three children. Despite her early writing success, Picoult did not immediately consider a career as an author. She actually worked for a Wall Street brokerage until the crash of 1987, and later as an eighth grade English teacher, before she went to Harvard to get her Masters degree in education. Picoult wrote her first novel, SONGS OF THE HUMPBACK WHALE, while she was pregnant with her first child, and she has not looked back since, publishing an average of one novel per year between 1992 and 2009. Her novels, including number one bestsellers such as NINETEEN MINUTES and MY SISTER'S KEEPER, typically involve characters faced with seemingly impossible ethical decisions, which are revealed from multiple points of view. She has some very real experience in such situations, as her son Jake was diagnosed with an extremely rare double case of cholesteatoma, a growth of tumors in both ears, which threatened to leave him deaf or worse. Picoult and her family opted for an experimental procedure which required more than a dozen operations, but Jake made a full recovery and regained his hearing in both ears. In addition to her novels, in 2007 Picoult enjoyed a short but very successful run writing for the comic book Wonder Woman. |
| | Read A Chapter | Prologue I was six years old the first time I disappeared. My father was working on a magic act for the annual Christmas show at the senior center, and his assistant, the receptionist who had a real gold tooth and false eyelashes as thick as spiders, got the flu. I was fully prepared to beg my father to be part of the act, but he asked, as if I were the one who would be doing him a favor. Like I said, I was six, and I still believed that my father truly could pull coins out of my ear and find a bouquet of flowers in the folds of Mrs. Kleban's chenille housecoat and make Mr. van Looen's false teeth disappear. He did these little tricks all the time for the elderly folks who came to play bingo or do chair aerobics or watch old black-and-white movies with soundtracks that crackled like flame. I knew some parts of the act were fake - his fiddlehead mustache, for example, and the quarter with two heads - but I was one hundred pe Click to read more... Prologue I was six years old the first time I disappeared. My father was working on a magic act for the annual Christmas show at the senior center, and his assistant, the receptionist who had a real gold tooth and false eyelashes as thick as spiders, got the flu. I was fully prepared to beg my father to be part of the act, but he asked, as if I were the one who would be doing him a favor. Like I said, I was six, and I still believed that my father truly could pull coins out of my ear and find a bouquet of flowers in the folds of Mrs. Kleban's chenille housecoat and make Mr. van Looen's false teeth disappear. He did these little tricks all the time for the elderly folks who came to play bingo or do chair aerobics or watch old black-and-white movies with soundtracks that crackled like flame. I knew some parts of the act were fake - his fiddlehead mustache, for example, and the quarter with two heads - but I was one hundred percent sure that his magic wand had the ability to transport me into some limbo zone, until he saw fit to call me back. On the night of the Christmas show, the residents of three different assisted-living communities in our town braved the cold and the snow to be bused to the senior center. They sat in a semicircle watching my father while I waited backstage. When he announced me - the Amazing Cordelia! - I stepped out wearing the sequined leotard I usually kept in my dress-up bin. I learned a lot that night. For example, that part of being the magician's assistant means coming face-to-face with illusion. That invisibility is really just knotting your body in a certain way and letting the black curtain fall over you. That people don't vanish into thin air; that when you can't find someone, it's because you've been misdirected to look elsewhere. (Continues...)
Excerpted from Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult Copyright © 2005 by Jodi Picoult. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
|
|
|
