Meet Valerie Nieman, author of In the Lonely Backwater, at Wonderland Book Club
FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
MASKS ARE OPTIONAL~ Quail Ridge Books no longer requires masks.
We will be meeting UPSTAIRS.
ABOUT THE BOOK: In the Lonely Backwater
All seventeen-year-old Maggie Warshauer wants is to leave her stifled life in Filliyaw Creek behind and head to college. An outsider at school and uncertain of her own sexual identity, Maggie longs to start again somewhere new. Inspired by a long-dead biologist’s journals, scientific-minded Maggie spends her days sailing, exploring, and categorizing life around her. But when her beautiful cousin Charisse disappears on prom night and is found dead at the marina where Maggie lives, Maggie’s plans begin to unravel. A mysterious stranger begins stalking her and a local detective on the case leaves her struggling to hold on to her secrets—her father’s alcoholism, her mother’s abandonment, a boyfriend who may or may not exist, and her own actions on prom night. As the detective gets closer to finding the truth, and Maggie’s stalker is closing in, she is forced to come to terms with the one person who might hold the answers—herself.
Fred Chappell wrote, “This novel is an intricate and intriguing work of art. Its intricacies are not mere twists of plot line; they are necessary and inevitable. They define, redefine, in a serious manner the term, mystery.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Valerie Nieman
Valerie Nieman has been a newspaper reporter, farmer, sailor, teacher, and editor. Her latest novel, In the Lonely Backwater, winner of the 2022 Sir Walter Raleigh Award as the best book of fiction by a North Carolina writer, was praised as “a page-turning thriller but also a complex psychological portrait of a young woman dealing with guilt, betrayal, and secrecy.” It joins To the Bones and three earlier novels, a short fiction collection, and three poetry collections, the most recent being Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse. A graduate of West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte, she has received state and National Endowment for the Arts grants. She lives in Rockingham County and is emerita professor of creative writing at NC A&T State University.
For more information about Valerie, please visit: https://www.valnieman.com/