A story of love, murder and obsession – from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Night Watch
‘Jayne Anne Phillips has written the novel of the year… A compulsively readable story’ STEPHEN KING
‘Combines a strange hypnotic and poetic power with the sharp tones of documentary evidence’ COLM TOIBIN
‘Superb’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Absorbing and captivating’ GUARDIAN
Chicago, 1931. Asta Eicher, a lonely widow with three children, is swept off her feet by charismatic Harry Powers. After a hasty courtship, she agrees to move across the country to Quiet Dell, his farm in Appalachia. She and her children are never seen again.
Emily Thornhill, one of the few female journalists in Chicago, is sent to West Virginia to cover the case. The deeper her investigation leads, the more obsessed she becomes with Asta’s disappearance – until she finally uncovers the terrifying truth.
‘Jayne Anne Phillips has written the novel of the year… A compulsively readable story’ STEPHEN KING
‘Combines a strange hypnotic and poetic power with the sharp tones of documentary evidence’ COLM TOIBIN
‘Superb’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Absorbing and captivating’ GUARDIAN
Chicago, 1931. Asta Eicher, a lonely widow with three children, is swept off her feet by charismatic Harry Powers. After a hasty courtship, she agrees to move across the country to Quiet Dell, his farm in Appalachia. She and her children are never seen again.
Emily Thornhill, one of the few female journalists in Chicago, is sent to West Virginia to cover the case. The deeper her investigation leads, the more obsessed she becomes with Asta’s disappearance – until she finally uncovers the terrifying truth.
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Reviews
Phillips' plot is engaging, romantic and fecund; her characters are beautiful, accomplished and good - except for the bad guy, who is very bad indeed
Phillips mesmerizingly spins together fact and fiction, vividly imagining the circumstances leading to their deaths, and sets a young female reporter on the case to solve it
An extraordinary achievement, a mesmerizing blend of fact and fiction that borrows from the historical record, including trial transcripts and newspaper accounts, but is cloaked in the shimmering language of a poet
There is a glowing beauty to the book's brave, generous version of history
Quiet Dell is a smart combination of true crime, history and fiction tied together with Phillips' seamlessly elegant writing... As the book proceeds to its dark conclusion, Emily offers readers a glimpse of light
Sometimes eerie and dreamlike, others grippingly tense, yet warmly human, always written with beauty and emotional power, Quiet Dell is a virtuoso performance by a highly original writer
Superb... A brilliant, beautiful novel
An extraordinary book... the best she has written
Quiet Dell has all the elements of a murder mystery, but its emotional scope is larger and more complex. It combines a strange hypnotic and poetic power with the sharp tones of documentary evidence. It offers a portrait of rural America in a time of crisis and dramatises the lives of a number of characters who are fascinating and memorable
Absorbing and captivating
Phillips' prose is as haunting as the questions she raises about the natures of sin, evil and grace
In a brilliant fusion of fact and fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips has written the novel of the year... A compulsively readable story
The truth of all of Phillips' characterizations is what lies behind this careful novel's compelling momentum
Phillips' effort to do justice - aesthetic and moral - to the victims feels bold and honorable... moving, even transporting... Phillips allows her own ample gifts to soar
Compelling... Richly imagined... Phillips' achievement is to reveal how intimately cruelty and kindness unfold