In a small prairie school in 1929, Connie Flood helps a backward student, Michael Graves, learn how to read. Observing them and darkening their lives is the principal, Parley Burns, whose strange behaviour culminates in an attack so disturbing its repercussions continue to the present day. Connie's niece, Anne, tells the story. Impelled by curiosity about her dynamic, adventurous aunt and her more conventional mother, she revisits Connie's past and her mother's broken childhood. In the process she unravels the enigma of Parley Burns and the mysterious, and unrelated, deaths of two young girls.
- ISBN10 0857051253
- ISBN13 9780857051257
- Publish Date 30 August 2012 (first published 1 April 2011)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 1 March 2017
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Quercus Publishing
- Imprint MacLehose Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 288
- Language English