River Angel: A Novel (Mysteries & Horror) - Softcover

Ansay, A. Manette

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0380729741 ISBN 13: 9780380729746

Publisher: Avon, 1999

Synopsis

In April 1991, in a little Wisconsin town about a hundred miles southwest of the town where I grewt up, a misfit boy was kidnapped by a group of high school kids who, later, would testify they'd merely meant to frighten him, to drive him around for a while. Somehow they ended up at the river, whooping and hollering on a two-lane bridge. Somehow the boy was shoved, he jumped, he slipped -- accounts vary -- into the icy water. The kids told police they never heard a splash; one reported seeing a brilliant flash of light. (Several people in the area witnessed a similar light, while others recalled hearing something "kind of like thunder.") All night, volunteers walked the river's edge, but it was dawn before the body was found in a barn a good mile from the bidge....
The owner of the barn had been the one to discover the body, and she said the boy's cheeks were rosy, his skin warm to the touch. A sweet smell hung in the air. "It was, " she said, "as if he were just sleeping." And then she told police she believed an angel had carried him there.
For years, it had been said that an angel lived in the river. Residents flipped coins into the water for luck, and a few claimed they had seen the angel, or known someone who'd seen it. The historical society downtown had a farmwife's journal, dated 1898, in which a woman described how an angel had rescued her family from a flood. Now, as the story of the boy's death spread, more people came forward with accounts of strange things that had happened on that night. Dogs had barked without ceasing till dawn; livestock broke free of padlocked barns. Someone's child crayoned a bridge, and above it, a wide-winged topica angel.
A miracle? A hoax? Or something in between? With acute insight and great compassion, A. Manette Ansay captures the inner life of a town and its residents struggling to forge a new identity in the face of a rapidly changing world. The result is a novel of transcendent beauty, an extraordinary portrait of the human soul's longing for grace.

About this title

Review

"A writer with a gift for persuasive and shapely narrative... With River Angel, A. Manette Ansay has moved beyond her prior mastery of the family scene to a lucid, eloquent representation of the commingled and conflicting lives of a town. But she has also paid a writer's tribute to that final, inviolate zone of privacy that is the domain of spiritual belief -- and, therefore, of angels."

The New York Times Book Review

"Ansay gracefully weaves together the lives of her characters."--Chicago Tribune

Ansay gracefully weaves together the lives of her characters. --Chicago Tribune"

About the Author

A. Manette Ansay is the author of eight books, including Vinegar Hill, Midnight Champagne (a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), and Blue Water. She has received the Pushcart Prize, two Great Lakes Book Awards, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She teaches in the MFA writing program at the University of Miami.

About this edition

• Publisher: Avon
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0380729741
• ISBN 13: 9780380729746
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256