And Give You Peace

How do you survive when the desperate action of a loved one has shattered your family? In this compelling novel, a young woman, Anastasia Dolarn, courageously examines her seemingly normal childhood to uncover the motivations behind an unspeakable tragedy. Jessica Treadway flawlessly portrays the complexity of human experience in the face of incomprehensible loss, revealing yet again why the New York Times Book Review has called her "a writer with an unsparing bent for the truth."

How do you survive when the desperate action of a loved one has shattered your family? In this compelling novel, a young woman, Anastasia Dolarn, courageously examines her seemingly normal childhood to uncover the motivations behind an unspeakable tragedy. Jessica Treadway flawlessly portrays the complexity of human experience in the face of incomprehensible loss, revealing yet again why the New York Times Book Review has called her "a writer with an unsparing bent for the truth."

"I know of few authors who can write with the intelligence, sensitivity, and grace of Jessica Treadway. I know of none who can write with such courage. And Give You Peace teaches us how—and why—to look at what we're afraid to see. We emerge redeemed."—Elizabeth Berg

"And Give You Peace is a rarity—a novel that is at once riveting, moving, insightful, and smart. I read this beautiful book on a day on my porch, oblivious to the phone and mail, unwilling to put it aside for anything."—Chris Bohjalian

"Jessica Treadway has a terrifying tale to tell—but her vision is os fierce and true, her compassion for people so remarkable, that I felt I must keep reading. Through the grace of her story, we shared a jouirney of the spirit. Memory has the power to conjure the dead, to shatter the soul or to heal it. I kenw if I kept my faith, this courageous writer would help me explore the most intimate betrayals, and together we might find a way to endure a family's most devastating losses."—Melanie Rae Thon

"Jessica Treadway's story collection, Absent Without Leave, was one of the best works of fiction of the '90s. In this brilliant novel, she broadens her scope and plunges into the deepest and sometimes tragic mysteries of family life. Please, read this book."—Christopher Tilghman

Jessica Treadway is a native of upstate New York and formerly a reporter for United Press International. She teaches creative writing and literature at Emerson College in Boston.

Publishers Weekly

The title of this intensely imagined first novel by short story writer Treadway (Absent Without Leave) comes from a Christian hymn and benediction, and its denouement is fittingly redemptive. Set in a small town near Albany, N.Y., the story is narrated by Anastasia Grace Dolan, whose father, threatened with divorce, inexplicably killed himself and his youngest daughter, 16-year-old Meggy, one June morning 12 years earlier, leaving recent college graduate Anastasia, middle sister Justine and their mother to absorb the echoing horror. In virtually crime-free Ashmont, the shooting sent shock waves through the whole town. Thinking back on what she thought was an idyllic childhood, Anastasia tries to pinpoint when she first sensed that trouble was brewing, "looking for meaning in small, forgotten things." She remembers a modified cheerleading song ("We are the Dolans, mighty, mighty Dolans") the family would sing to ease themselves past difficult spots, a trip they took to Boston, a summer spent building a tree house. Her father, an unsuccessful car salesman, was always sensitive and finicky, but Anastasia wonders now whether his fixation on cleanliness and order might have been a full-fledged obsessive-compulsive disorder that spiraled his mind into madness. She wonders, too, about her mother, who seems to have recovered much too quickly from the murder-suicide. Although the author's vision of a viable peace for a shattered family is occasionally unfocused , the final impression she leaves is that of a loving regeneration of life through the flowering of memory and emotion. Treadway's careful craftsmanship and her unobtrusive grounding of the narrative with details of smalltown life add authenticity to a moving exploration of promising lives detoured into tragedy and reaffirmed through the sharing of buried secrets and a willingness to forgive. Agent, Richard Parks. (Jan.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Jessica Treadway is a native of upstate New York and formerly a reporter for United Press International. She teaches creative writing and literature at Emerson College in Boston.