Breathing Water, page 1
Outstanding Praise for the Novels of T. Greenwood
Breathing Water
“A poignant, clear-eyed first novel . . . filled with careful poetic description. . . the story is woven skillfully.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“A poignant debut . . . Greenwood sensitively and painstakingly unravels her protagonist’s self-loathing and replaces it with a graceful dignity.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A vivid, somberly engaging first book.”
—Larry McMurtry
“With its strong characters, dramatic storytelling, and heartfelt narration, Breathing Water should establish T. Greenwood as an important young novelist who has the great gift of telling a serious and sometimes tragic story in an entertaining and pleasing way.”
—Howard Frank Mosher, author of Walking to Gatlinburg
“An impressive first novel.”
—Booklist
“Breathing Water is startling and fresh . . . Greenwood’s novel is ripe with originality.”
—San Diego Union-Tribune
Grace
“Grace is a poetic, compelling story that glows in its subtle, yet searing examination of how we attempt to fill the potentially devastating fissures in our lives. Each character is masterfully drawn; each struggles in their own way to find peace amid tumultuous circumstance. With her always crisp imagery and fearless language, Greenwood doesn’t back down from the hard issues or the darker sides of the human psyche, managing to create astounding empathy and a balanced view of each player along the way. The story expertly builds to a breathtaking climax, leaving the reader with a clear understanding of how sometimes, only a moment of grace can save us.”
—Amy Hatvany, author of Best Kept Secret
“Grace is at once heartbreaking, thrilling, and painfully beautiful. From the opening page, to the breathless conclusion, T. Greenwood again shows why she is one of our most gifted and lyrical storytellers.”
—Jim Kokoris, author of The Pursuit of Other Interests
“Greenwood has given us a family we are all fearful of becoming—creeping toward scandal, flirting with financial disaster, and hovering on the verge of dissolution. Grace is a masterpiece of small-town realism that is as harrowing as it is heartfelt.”
—Jim Ruland, author of Big Lonesome
“This novel will keep readers rapt until the very end . . . Shocking and honest, you’re likely to never forget this book.”
—RT Book Reviews
Nearer Than the Sky
“Greenwood is an assured guide through this strange territory; she has a lush, evocative style.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“T. Greenwood writes with grace and compassion about loyalty and betrayal, love and redemption in this totally absorbing novel about daughters and mothers.”
—Ursula Hegi, author of Stones from the River
“A lyrical investigation into the unreliability and elusiveness of memory centers Greenwood’s second novel.... The kaleidoscopic heart of the story is rich with evocative details about its heroine’s inner life.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Compelling . . . Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal
“Doesn’t disappoint. A complicated story of love and abuse told with a directness and intensity that packs a lightning charge.”
—Booklist
“Nearer Than the Sky is a remarkable portrait of resilience. With clarity and painful precision, T. Greenwood probes the dark history of Indie’s family.”
—René Steinke, author of The Fires and Holy Skirts
“Greenwood’s writing is lyrical and original. There is warmth and even humor and love. Her representation of MSBP is meticulous.”
—San Diego Union-Tribune
“Deft handling of a difficult and painful subject . . . compelling.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Potent . . . Greenwood’s clear-eyed prose takes the stuff of tabloid television and lends it humanity.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“T. Greenwood brings stunning psychological richness and authenticity to Nearer Than the Sky. Hers is the very first work of fiction to accurately address factitious disorders and Munchausen by proxy—the curious, complex, and dramatic phenomena in which people falsify illness to meet their own deep emotional needs.”
—Marc D. Feldman, M.D., author of Patient or Pretender and Playing Sick?: Untangling the Web of Munchausen Syndrome, Munchausen by Proxy, Malingering, and Factitious Disorder, and co-author of Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood
This Glittering World
“In This Glittering World, T. Greenwood demonstrates once again that she is a poet and storyteller of unique gifts, not the least of which is a wise and compassionate heart.”
—Drusilla Campbell, author of The Good Sister and Blood Orange
“T. Greenwood’s novel This Glittering World is swift, stark, calamitous. Her characters, their backs against the wall, confront those difficult moments that will define them and Greenwood paints these troubled lives with attention, compassion, and hope. Through it all, we are caught on the dangerous fault lines of a culturally torn northern Arizona, where the small city of Flagstaff butts up against the expansive Navajo Reservation and the divide between the two becomes manifest. As this novel about family, friendship, and allegiance swirls toward its tumultuous climax, This Glittering World asks us how it is that people sometimes choose to turn toward redemption, and sometimes choose its opposite—how it is, finally, that we become the people we become.”
—Jerry Gabriel, author of Drowned Boy and winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction
“Stark, taut, and superbly written, this dark tale brims with glimpses of the Southwest and scenes of violence, gruesome but not gratuitous. This haunting look at a fractured family is certain to please readers of literary suspense.”
—Library Journal (starred)
“Greenwood’s prose is beautiful. Her writing voice is simple but emotional.”
—Romantic Times Book Reviews
Undressing the Moon
“This beautiful story, eloquently told, demands attention.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Greenwood has skillfully managed to create a novel with unforgettable characters, finely honed descriptions, and beautiful imagery.”
—Book Street USA
“A lyrical, delicately affecting tale.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Rarely has a writer rendered such highly charged topics . . . to so wrenching, yet so beautifully understated, an effect.... T. Greenwood takes on risky subject matter, handling her volatile topics with admirable restraint.... Ultimately more about life than death, Undressing the Moon beautifully elucidates the human capacity to maintain grace under unrelenting fire.”
—The Los Angeles Times
The Hungry Season
“This compelling study of a family in need of rescue is very effective, owing to Greenwood’s eloquent, exquisite word artistry and her knack for developing subtle, suspenseful scenes . . . Greenwood’s sensitive and gripping examination of a family in crisis is real, complex, and anything but formulaic.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“A deeply psychological read.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Can there be life after tragedy? How do you live with the loss of a child, let alone the separation emotionally from all your loved ones? T. Greenwood with beautiful prose poses this question while delving into the psyches of a successful man, his wife, and his son. . . . This is a wonderful story, engaging from the beginning that gets better with every chapter.”
—The Washington Times
Two Rivers
“From the moment the train derails in the town of Two Rivers, I was hooked. Who is this mysterious young stranger named Maggie, and what is she running from? In Two Rivers, T. Greenwood weaves a haunting story in which the sins of the past threaten to destroy the fragile equilibrium of the present. Ripe with surprising twists and heartbreakingly real characters, Two Rivers is a remarkable and complex look at race and forgiveness in small-town America.”
—Michelle Richmond, New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Fog and No One You Know
“Two Rivers is a convergence of tales, a reminder that the past never washes away, and yet, in T. Greenwood’s delicate handling of time gone and time to come, love and forgiveness wait on the other side of what life does to us and what we do to it. This novel is a sensitive and suspenseful portrayal of family and the ties that bind.”
—Lee Martin, author of The Bright Forever and River of Heaven
“The premise of Two Rivers is alluring: the very morning a deadly train derailment upsets the balance of a sleepy Vermont town, a mysterious girl shows up on Harper Montgomery’s doorstep, forcing him to dredge up a lifetime of memories—from his blissful, indelible childhood to his lonely, contemporary existence. Most of all, he must look long and hard at that terrible night twelve years ago, when everything he held dear was taken from him, and he, in turn, took back. T. Greenwood’s novel is full of love, betrayal, lost hopes, and a burning question: is it ever too late to find redemption?”
—Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, author of The Effects of Light and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize–winning Set Me Free
“Greenwood is a writer of subtle strength, evoking small-town life beautifully while spreading out the map of Harper’s lif
—Publishers Weekly
“T. Greenwood’s writing shimmers and sings as she braids together past, present, and the events of one desperate day. I ached for Harper in all of his longing, guilt, grief, and vast, abiding love, and I rejoiced at his final, hard-won shot at redemption.”
—Marisa de los Santos, New York Times bestselling author of Belong to Me and Love Walked In
“Two Rivers is a stark, haunting story of redemption and salvation. T. Greenwood portrays a world of beauty and peace that, once disturbed, reverberates with searing pain and inescapable consequences; this is a story of a man who struggles with the deepest, darkest parts of his soul, and is able to fight his way to the surface to breathe again. But also—maybe more so—it is the story of a man who learns the true meaning of family: When I am with you, I am home. A memorable, powerful work.”
—Garth Stein, New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain
“A complex tale of guilt, remorse, revenge, and forgiveness . . . Convincing. . . Interesting . . .”
—Library Journal
“In the tradition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird, T. Greenwood’s Two Rivers is a wonderfully distinctive American novel, abounding with memorable characters, unusual lore and history, dark family secrets, and love of life. Two Rivers is the story that people want to read: the one they have never read before.”
—Howard Frank Mosher, author of Walking to Gatlinburg
“Two Rivers is a dark and lovely elegy, filled with heartbreak that turns itself into hope and forgiveness. I felt so moved by this luminous novel.”
—Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author
“Two Rivers is reminiscent of Thornton Wilder, with its quiet New England town shadowed by tragedy, and of Sherwood Anderson, with its sense of desperate loneliness and regret.... It’s to Greenwood’s credit that she answers her novel’s mysteries in ways that are believable, that make you feel the sadness that informs her characters’ lives.”
—BookPage
Books by T. Greenwood
Grace
This Glittering World
The Hungry Season
Two Rivers
Undressing the Moon
Nearer Than the Sky
Breathing Water
BREATHING WATER
T. Greenwood
KENSINGTON BOOKS
www.kensingtonbooks.com
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Table of Contents
Outstanding Praise for the Novels of T. Greenwood
Books by T. Greenwood
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
PROLOGUE
PART ONE
Seattle 1994
Lake Gormlaith, Vermont - Late May 1994
October 3, 1987
June 1994
June 1991
June 1994
August 1991
June 29, 1994
July 1991
July 3, 1994
July 1991
July 1994
PART TWO
July 1994
Fall 1989
July 1994
August 1991
July 1994
Late Summer, 1991
August 1994
August 24, 1991
PART THREE
August 1994
September 1994
EPILOGUE
A READING GROUP GUIDE - BREATHING WATER
Discussion Questions
A CONVERSATION WITH T. GREENWOOD
Teaser chapter
Copyright Page
With love and gratitude to my grandfathers,
one for poetry and the other for music
Acknowledgments
I would first like to thank my agent, Christy Fletcher, and my editor, Joe Veltre, for their enthusiasm about this novel and for their thoughtful insights and suggestions during the revision process. I would also like to thank Erika Fad for her patience and helpfulness.
I am deeply indebted to the following people for their ceaseless encouragement and incredible faith. Without them, this book would neither exist nor matter: Lon deMatties, Warren Doody, Janet Dunphy-Brown, Ann-Britt Malden, Howard Mosher, Nicole Norum, Ron Ross, Samantha Ruckman, Esther Stewart, Beya Stewart, and my many wonderful teachers.
I offer thanks to my grandparents—Don Craig, Eunice Craig, and Clifford Greenwood—for their love and support. To my sister, Ceilidh Greenwood, for her generosity and humor.
To my parents, Paul and Cyndy, for believing.
And to Patrick, for listening.
PROLOGUE
Do not ask me for haunted. Do not ever ask me for haunted, because I will give you haunted and you will never be the same. I will turn a nursery rhyme room into a prison of rhythmic sighs. Of mice screaming and clocks that will not stop their tick-tock, tick-tock. The closed eyes of dolls and animals will not open here, not even if you try to pry them awake with gentle, pleading fingers. I will make the record skip; the arm won’t lift from the only song that has ever made you sad.
I will tear each blade of grass from the green velvet of your memory, leaving only the empty stems of dandelions gone to seed. I will burn the wooden castles of your remembrance, set the forest where all of your remaining dreams reside on fire. The branches you swung from will be nothing more than steaming bones in the cold morning air.
I will hold the baby bird that you brought back to life with an eye dropper of your breath. I will be careful with its wings, of its softly beating chest. I will hold it in the palm of my hand, close my fingers gently around its wings. I will close my fingers so gently you will think that you are safe. But then, quite suddenly, I will squeeze my fist tightly around its quickening heart. Squeeze until beak crumbles, until bones crack. And this will be the one thing that you can’t forgive.
I know now what you will and will not tolerate. I know from watching you, from inflicting pain, that you are capable of great forgiveness. You forgive without waiting for apologies. You forgive tremendous cruelty, each cruelty, until this one. I am certain of this. I will make you trust, and then I will crush the bones of your credulity.
Do not ask me for haunted, do not ever ask me for haunted. Because I will give you haunted and you will never be the same. You may think that exorcism is as easy as words, but it’s far more complicated than that, much more dangerous and ultimately unkind. Do not ask me for haunted, don’t ever ask me to recollect, because the collected remains I will give you will be more real to you than I am.
Lake Gormlaith, Vermont
August 1991
Blue night. I am standing at the edge of the lake, shivering in my summer dress when they pull her body out of the water. I am shivering and tearing at my cuticles when they lay her on the moon-drenched, indigo grass. At the edge of the lake, I tremble with cold as I watch Max’s shadow pulling the boat out of the water and hear the scream of the wooden bottom scraping against the rocks.
