Secrets of Eden: A Novel
Chris Bohjalian
Language: English
Pages: 400
ISBN: 0307394980
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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From the bestselling author of The Double Bind, Midwives, and Skeletons at the Feast comes a novel of shattered faith, intimate secrets, and the delicate nature of sacrifice.
"There," says Alice Hayward to Reverend Stephen Drew, just after her baptism, and just before going home to the husband who will kill her that evening and then shoot himself. Drew, tortured by the cryptic finality of that short utterance, feels his faith in God slipping away and is saved from despair only by a meeting with Heather Laurent, the author of wildly successful, inspirational books about . . . angels.
Heather survived a childhood that culminated in her own parents' murder-suicide, so she identifies deeply with Alice’s daughter, Katie, offering herself as a mentor to the girl and a shoulder for Stephen – who flees the pulpit to be with Heather and see if there is anything to be salvaged from the spiritual wreckage around him.
But then the State's Attorney begins to suspect that Alice's husband may not have killed himself. . .and finds out that Alice had secrets only her minister knew.
Secrets of Eden is both a haunting literary thriller and a deeply evocative testament to the inner complexities that mark all of our lives. Once again Chris Bohjalian has given us a riveting page-turner in which nothing is precisely what it seems. As one character remarks, “Believe no one. Trust no one. Assume all of our stories are suspect.”
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and that meant that we needed two computers. We wanted to be on Facebook, and we wanted to buy new songs for our iPods, and there were concert videos on YouTube we wanted to find, and so I said I would go get my laptop. It would take ten minutes. And Tina didn’t even offer to drive. She didn’t need to, because I was just going like a mile to my house. She just tossed me her keys from the bottom of her purse. Anyway, after I saw Stephen, I did what he said. I went back to Tina’s. The plan, as
much as there was one, was that he was going to make it look like my dad had killed himself. He reminded me that my dad had just killed my mom. And that my dad was a horrible man. Stephen didn’t expect that anyone would think he’d murdered my dad. I don’t think it had crossed either of our minds that that would happen. It was supposed to look just like a suicide. Whenever I saw him later that autumn, I told him I was worried he was going to go to jail. Each time he reminded me of something
stippling and soot—not even particularly close. The gun might have been fired from as much as a few feet away. Second, there was the pattern of the blood and bone and brain that had sprayed the living room: the remains that people like the Reverend Drew and Alice’s best friend had cleaned up on the screen and the china cabinet, and had tried and failed to remove from the couch. David thought it was possible that the spatter was the result of a bullet pulverizing the skull in a suicide. But from
met him before.” “That’s correct. I got no indication from them that they were aware of any relationship between Stephen Drew and Heather prior to the deaths of the Haywards.” “Had they heard about the Haywards before Heather and Drew got there?” “They’d seen the story on the news. They still assumed it was a murder-suicide.” “Your cell phones work there?” “No, they didn’t. That part of Drew’s story checks out, too.” “She say anything about her father’s history of abuse or her parents’
quickly he rejoined Heather Laurent at her place in the city and stayed for another week or so.” “Why the breakup?” “He hadn’t told her that he’d had an affair with Alice Hayward. He only ’fessed up to her after his attorney told him that Alice kept a journal and he was going to have to give us a mouth swab.” “And this made her mad.” “Well, it angered her as much as anything can anger her. She’s not a person with what you might call anger-management issues. She’s pretty serene. On the surface