What Is Left the Daughter

<p>Howard Norman widely regarded as one of this country's finest novelists returns to the mesmerizing fictional terrain of his major books--<em>The Bird Artist</em> <em>The Museum Guard</em> and <em>The Haunting of L</em>--in this erotically charged and morally complex story.</p><p>Seventeen-year-old Wyatt Hillyer is suddenly orphaned when his parents within hours of each other jump off two different bridges--the result of their separate involvements with the same compelling neighbor a Halifax switchboard operator and aspiring actress. The suicides cause Wyatt to move to small-town Middle Economy to live with his uncle aunt and ravishing cousin Tilda.</p><p>Setting in motion the novel's chain of life-altering passions and the wartime perfidy at its core is the arrival of the German student Hans Mohring carrying only a satchel. Actual historical incidents--including a German U-boat's sinking of the Nova Scotia-Newfoundland ferry <em>Caribou</em> on which Aunt Constance Hillyer might or might not be traveling--lend intense narrative power to Norman's uncannily layered story.</p><p>Wyatt's account of the astonishing--not least to him-- events leading up to his fathering of a beloved daughter spills out twenty-one years later. It's a confession that speaks profoundly of the mysteries of human character in wartime and is directed with both despair and hope to an audience of one.</p><p>An utterly stirring novel. This is Howard Norman at his celebrated best.</p>