Some Other Town

Channeling the emotional intensity of Susan Minot and Amy Bloomand infused with a witty, dream-like surrealism reminiscent of Margaret Atwoodthis mesmerizing debut takes us inside the unsettling world of Margaret Lydia Benning, which turns upside down when she falls in loveand then unravels before our eyes.What I have to tell Ben is just this. At last I am certain. All the signs, all the dreams are in. And I know now I have made a terrible mistake. I was wrong, it turns out, about us.Margaret Lydia Benning lives adrift in the same Midwest town where she went to college. By day, she works at a low-level job for the Project, a university-sponsored educational publisher housed in a former sanatorium. There she shares the fourth floor with a squadron of eccentric editors and a resident ghost from the screamers wing. At night, Margaret returns to her small house on Mott Street, resigned to the disturbing overtures of her strange neighbor, Mrs. Eberline.Emotionally sleepwalking through the days is no way to lead a life. But then Margaret meets Ben Adams, a visiting professor of art at the university. Despite the oddsand their best intentionsMargaret and her professor become lovers, and she glimpses a future she had never before imagined. For the first time, she has hopeuntil Ben inexplicably vanishes. In the wake of his disappearance, Margaret sets out to find him. Her journey will force her to question everything she believes to be true.Told through intertwined perspectives, by turns incandescent and haunting, Some Other Town is an unforgettable tale, with a heart-breaking twist, of one womans awakening to her own possibilityand her ability to love, and love well.