
Flying Shoes
Lisa Howorth(Author)
Bloomsbury Circus (Publisher)
Published on 14. August 2014
Book
Paperback/Softback
336 pages
978-1-4088-5563-8 (ISBN)
Description
Thirty years ago, on Mother's Day, Mary Byrd Thornton's nine-year-old stepbrother was murdered. His killer was never found. At the time, Mary Byrd had been fifteen: in love and caught up in the excitement of the Sixties, but when Stevie died, her family and her life fell apart.
For years she has struggled with the knowledge that the murderer is still out there, as well as her own nagging guilt over Stevie's death. Yet she has built a life for herself in Mississippi: she has married a Southern gentleman and has two children she adores. With her ramshackle house, her teeming garden and her menagerie of animals, she is immersed in a comfortable, if somewhat eccentric and occasionally restless day-to-day existence.
When a journalist chances upon the mystery of Stevie's death and begins to dig into it, Mary Byrd suddenly finds herself on a reluctant journey back to her childhood home in Virginia. Along the way she encounters help from unexpected quarters and finds herself confronting not only her family's story but the stories of many others - both the living and the dead.
For years she has struggled with the knowledge that the murderer is still out there, as well as her own nagging guilt over Stevie's death. Yet she has built a life for herself in Mississippi: she has married a Southern gentleman and has two children she adores. With her ramshackle house, her teeming garden and her menagerie of animals, she is immersed in a comfortable, if somewhat eccentric and occasionally restless day-to-day existence.
When a journalist chances upon the mystery of Stevie's death and begins to dig into it, Mary Byrd suddenly finds herself on a reluctant journey back to her childhood home in Virginia. Along the way she encounters help from unexpected quarters and finds herself confronting not only her family's story but the stories of many others - both the living and the dead.
Reviews / Votes
Like all great stories from Mississippi, Flying Shoes never proceeds in a straight line. It twists and turns in order to notice what matters most in life, and then delivers us to exactly where we need to be. Those of us who have waited a long time for this book celebrate its arrival * <b>Ann Patchett</B> * Vividly depicted characters. The writing fizzles with energy and wit * <b><i>Daily Mail</i></b> * A bittersweet tale told with much dark wit * <b><i>Image Magazine</i></b> * A very funny novel about her current life in a "boozy, barbecued" market town comes to the fore * <b><i>New Yorker</b></i> *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 135 mm
Weight
373 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4088-5563-8 (9781408855638)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Lisa Howorth was born in Washington, DC, where her family has lived in the area for four generations. She moved to Oxford, Mississippi, where she married her husband, Richard, and raised their three children. They opened Square Books (named by Publishers Weekly as the 2013 Book Store of the Year) in 1979. Flying Shoes is a work of fiction, but the murder is based on the still-unsolved case of Lisa's stepbrother in 1966.
@SquareBooks
www.squarebooks.com
@SquareBooks
www.squarebooks.com