The Lost Daughter
Authors: Lucy Ferriss
Acclaim for the work of Lucy Ferriss
“
The Lost Daughter
delivers the goods: flawed but sympathetic characters and a plot that will keep readers turning the pages voraciously. From its harrowing prologue to its final sentences, I was emotionally engaged with this fine novel. Ferriss is a masterful storyteller.”
—Wally Lamb,
New York Times
bestselling author of
She’s Come Undone
and
The Hour I First Believed
“This achingly beautiful novel about marriage and love, pulsing with complex life, is the work of a master American realist, up there with Richard Yates or anyone else. With spellbinding attentiveness and intimacy it explores what a husband and wife can be sure they know about each other but also, in prose wearing night-vision glasses, the inaccessible places where the hidden past lies threateningly coiled, and which love must also find a way to reach.”
—Francisco Goldman, author of
Say Her Name
“In her well-crafted novel, Ferriss considers the tender moments that shape our choices and challenge our most sacred bonds. Her story reminds us how vulnerable our destinies are to the mistakes of our pasts.”
—Elizabeth Brundage, author of
A Stranger Like You
and
The Doctor’s Wife
“In
The Lost Daughter
, Lucy Ferriss has crafted a moving tale of sin and redemption, motherhood and second chances, that is sure to touch the reader’s heart. This is a plot fully loaded, with flawed, compelling characters, in whom we recognize our best dreams of ourselves.”
—Eric Goodman, author of
Twelfth and Race
and
Child of My Right Hand
“Ah, motherhood—who can know your bliss, your ache, your secrets? Lucy Ferriss knows and tells in this fast-paced, engrossing, and sometimes gruesome tale of mothers and daughters who are not what anyone expected.”
—Deb Olin Unferth, author of
Vacation
and
Revolution:
The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War
“Lucy Ferriss holds a mirror to today’s headlines, smashes it, and turns the splintered shards into a tension-filled, beautifully written story of the moment, when a deadly secret takes on a life of its own.”
—Mary-Ann Tirone Smith, author of
Girls of Tender Age
“A hugely affecting meditation on the fragility of even the strongest bonds, when it comes to marriage…a beautifully constructed and moving novel.”
—Jim Shepard, author of
You Think That’s Bad
“The Lost Daughter
is an intelligent, entertaining, and deeply moving book about three courageous people who think they have escaped the past—‘with its small-town gossip and strip malls and mistakes’—only to find that they are still deeply entangled with it and with each other. This is my favorite of Lucy Ferriss’s novels and I read it with great pleasure.”
—Molly Giles, author of
Iron Shoes
and
Creek Walk
“This is the voice of a major writer.”
—
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Ferriss precisely traces the evolution of feeling.”
—
The New York Times Book Review
“Tough, grave, and sweet…a book that will stay with me for a long time.”
—Lee Smith, author of
Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger
“Beautiful…sympathetic, well-defined characters.”
—
The Advocate
“Sad and soaring and sexy,…lyrical, honest prose.”
—Susan Straight, author of
Take One Candle Light a Room
“Bittersweet but often laugh-out-loud funny.”
—
ForeWord
“Sharp humor and dazzling writing…one of the best books of the year, period.”
—
St. Louis Riverfront Times
“Thought-provoking and disturbing…subtle and original.”
—
Contra Costa Times
“If in this novel Ferriss makes you think, she will also make you feel.”
—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)
“Elegant and fearless.”
—Mark Winegardner, author of
Crooked River Burning
“Ferriss’s strength as an author is her uncanny ability to layer so many emotions in her fiction.… This is a beautifully written collection, worthy of winning a prize.”
—
St. Paul Pioneer Press
“A powerful, painful book.”
—Frederick Busch, author of
Rescue Missions
“A gripping coming-of-age story…dense and richly evocative.”
—
The Washington Times
“A complex, satisfying work.”
—
Ms.
“A beautiful novel about family and love, from one of the best writers around.”
—Oscar Hijuelos, author of
Beautiful Maria of My Soul
“Ferriss writes with mesmerizing power and confidence. Her characters throb with life, and her story takes turns that alternately fire and chill the blood.”
—Knight Ridder
“Tight, cleanly structured, and polished…The author’s voice is intelligent and her analysis shrewd.…Interiors—the parts that matter—are brilliantly drawn, and the prose itself is often superb.”
—
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
T
HE
L
OST
D
AUGHTER
L
ucy
F
erriss
BERKLEY BOOKS. NEW YORK
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
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Lines from “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” are taken from
Harmonium
by Wallace Stevens. Lines from
“The Disquieting Muses” are taken from
The Collected Poems
© Sylvia Plath and reprinted by permission of Faber
and Faber Ltd. Lines from “Daddy” are taken from
Ariel
by Sylvia Plath © Ted Hughes and reprinted by permission of
Faber and Faber Ltd. Lines from “Nature the Gentlest
Mother Is” are by Emily Dickinson.
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over
and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2012 by Lucy Ferriss.
“Readers Guide” copyright © 2012 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Cover photograph copyright © by Irene Lamprakou / Arcangel Images. Cover design by Lesley Worrell.
Interior text design by Laura K. Corless.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or
electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of
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BERKLEY
® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley trade paperback edition / February 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ferriss, Lucy, 1954–
The lost daughter / Lucy Ferriss. — Berkley trade paperback ed.
p. cm.
EISBN: 9781101560167
1. Marriage—Fiction. 2. Family secrets—Fiction. 3. Triangles (Interpersonal relations)—
Fiction. I. Title.
PS3556.E754L67 2012
813’.54—dc23
2011023502
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Don
Many believers breathed life into the sparks of this story. Fellow writers Eric Goodman and Irene Papoulis helped keep the fire burning. Al Zuckerman, my agent, gave his immense vitality and insight to the forging of characters and their all-too-human actions. Don Moon kept seeing the possibilities in one glowing ember or another. The acumen of my editor, Jackie Cantor, along with copyeditor Amy Schneider, brought both light and warmth to the project. For help on issues of disability in school and in the family, I am grateful to Jeffrey Kittay, as well as to Jonathan Mooney’s
The Short Bus: A Journey Beyond Normal
and Jane Bernstein’s
Rachel in the World
. I offer humble and enduring thanks to all.
What seas what shores what granite islands towards my timbers
And woodthrush calling through the fog
My daughter.
—T. S. Eliot, “Marina”
Prologue
1993
E
ven as Brooke signed the guest register at the motel, she was trying to remember whose idea this had been. Alex had had fifty bucks in his wallet, and she’d had thirty-five, which she’d handed to him before they walked through the glass doors of the lobby. It was Alex who’d driven away from Daisy’s Kitchen, away from Windermere toward Scranton. It was Brooke who’d spotted the Econo Lodge sign. “We’ll just get to the room,” Alex had said when he parked the car, “and then we’ll have time to think.”
