The Diviner's Tale - Couverture rigide

Ariel’s Crossing (2003)

“An ambitious, rich, and original story of loss, rapture, the end and the beginning of things.”—Joyce Carol Oates

“In ARIEL’S CROSSING, Morrow has written a ghost story of sorts, in which he explores all those notions of who is the ghost and who is the haunted...the author argues for the gravity of home: Neither the living nor the dead can escape its draw...Ariel’s Crossing convincingly argues that it is not ghosts but what we repeat that haunts and sometimes comforts us.”—The Washington Post

“[A] richly layered novel about searching for family and reconciliation...a masterful, poignant novel.” —Boston Herald

Giovanni's Gift (1997)

"A strong sense of place informs all of Bradford Morrow's novels... Landscape is an equally important force in his fourth work of fiction, GIOVANNI'S GIFT, a tale of emotional growth and social conflict set against the echoing backdrop of the American West... Beautiful descriptions of scenery and weather amplify the characters' moods; the author weaves a glistening web of metaphor, with references to Pandora's box and extended passages from Hawthorne ...an ambitious, thoughtful book, technically accomplished and emotionally truthful." —The Washington Post (front page)

"Morrow is a fine writer with an extraordinary feel for the physicality of fiction...his assets belong to this world—to the rendering of place, with all its hard edges, supreme possibility and tangible detail. Morrow is a master landscape painter of contemporary fiction... Like its predecessor, Trinity Fields, GIOVANNI'S GIFT belongs to the West: to its vast skies and towering laws, to the land's Edenic promise that can turn spooky and pernicious at the drop of the sun. I was touched by the heart of the novel and the great regard of it's creator for the land and the sky."—The Boston Globe (front page)

"One finishes GIOVANNI'S GIFT agog at the layers of meaning and the intellectual notions Morrow has touched on within the context of a warm, engrossing story."—The Philadelphia Enquirer

"Complex and highly charged...an elegant unveiling of the dark secrets that often lie submerged beneath grim events, from the novelist whose earlier inclinations towards the gothic seem to have reached full flower."—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"An absorbing tale...the book's lush prose is rich with threat and suspense...The erotic sparks and notes of intrigue that Helen stirs up with Grant are heady, beguiling stuff. An arresting work from an adventurous writer. In juggling of the conventions of gothic fiction Morrow finds an enticingly unsettling contemporary home for them."—San Francisco Chronicle

An Otto Penzler Book

Walking a lonely forested valley on a spring morning in upstate New York, having been hired by a developer to dowse the land, Cassandra Brooks comes upon the shocking vision of a young girl hanged from a tree. When she returns with authorities to the site, the body has vanished, leaving in question Cassandra’s credibility if not her sanity. The next day, on a return visit with the sheriff to have another look, a dazed, mute missing girl emerges from the woods, alive and the very picture of Cassandra’s hanged girl.

What follows is the narrative of ever-deepening and increasingly bizarre divinations that will lead this gifted young woman, the struggling single mother of twin boys, hurtling toward a past she’d long since thought was behind her. The Diviner’s Tale is at once a journey of self-discovery and an unorthodox murder mystery, a tale of the fantastic and a family chronicle told by an otherwise ordinary woman.

When Cassandra’s dark forebodings take on tangible form, she is forced to confront a life spiraling out of control. And soon she is locked in a mortal chess match with a real-life killer who has haunted her since before she can remember.