TUESDAY SPARKS: “THE ROANOKE GIRLS”

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by The Purple Booker.

Today’s feature is a recent download:  The Roanoke Girls, by Amy Engel, shocks and tantalizes, twisting its way through revelation after mesmerizing revelation, exploring the secrets families keep and the fierce and terrible love that both binds them together and rips them apart.

 

Intro:  (Prologue)

The first time I saw Roanoke was in a dream.  I knew little of it beyond its name and the fact it was in Kansas, a place I had never been.  My mother only ever mentioned it when she’d had too much wine, her breath turned sweet and her words slow and syrupy like molasses.  So my subconscious filled in the rest.  In my dream it stood tall and stately, tucked among a forest of spring-green trees.  Its red-brick facade was broken up by black shutters, white trim, delicate wrought-iron balconies.  A little girl’s fantasy of a princess castle.

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Teaser:  I ease the list out from underneath its magnet without really knowing why.  It feels like the closest I’ve gotten to Allegra since I’ve been back, as if her essence is embedded in this forgotten scrap of paper, and I don’t trust Sharon to keep it safe.  I flip the paper over, hoping, maybe, for some more personal message.  But it’s just a drugstore receipt from Parsons, a larger town about forty-five minutes from Osage Flats (p. 56).

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Synopsis:  “Roanoke girls never last long around here. In the end, we either run or we die.”

After her mother’s suicide, fifteen year-old Lane Roanoke came to live with her grandparents and fireball cousin, Allegra, on their vast estate in rural Kansas. Lane knew little of her mother’s mysterious family, but she quickly embraced life as one of the rich and beautiful Roanoke girls. But when she discovered the dark truth at the heart of the family, she ran…fast and far away.

Eleven years later, Lane is adrift in Los Angeles when her grandfather calls to tell her Allegra has gone missing. Did she run too? Or something worse? Unable to resist his pleas, Lane returns to help search, and to ease her guilt at having left Allegra behind. Her homecoming may mean a second chance with the boyfriend whose heart she broke that long ago summer. But it also means facing the devastating secret that made her flee, one she may not be strong enough to run from again.

As it weaves between Lane’s first Roanoke summer and her return, The Roanoke Girls shocks and tantalizes, twisting its way through revelation after mesmerizing revelation, exploring the secrets families keep and the fierce and terrible love that both binds them together and rips them apart.

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What do you think?  Do you want to keep reading?

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