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The follow-up to Pulitzer Prize finalist The Bright Forever, The Evening Shades tells the story of two lonely people in a small Midwestern town slowly revealing their secrets to themselves, and each other ...
One afternoon in the autumn of 1972, a lonely widow in Mt. Gilead, Illinois, makes the impromptu decision to rent out a room in her house to a socially awkward man, a stranger who has come to town. It is risky—she doesn't know anything about him. But Edith Green can no longer bear a life lived alone. And Henry Dees, haunted by the past he carries with him from Tower Hill, Indiana, is plagued by a tremendous guilt about things he did and didn't do that led to the death of a little girl back home. How can he face the rest of his life?
The Evening Shades is as moving and suspenseful as its predecesser, Pulitzer finalist The Bright Forever.
But it is a story that stands alone: a story of love found in middle age and the joy it promises, but not without serious complications. There is the bereaved family of the little girl, who are holding their own secrets about the mysterious disappearances of both the man who killed their daughter and Henry Dees.
The Evening Shades is a poignant story of accommodation, resilience, forgiveness, and love in the face of all that threatens the splendor of our ordinary lives.
"Martin's slow-burn mystery runs on reflective character work and lucid prose, and he keeps the reader guessing right up to the end. This is one to savor." —Publishers Weekly
"Unsettling yet compelling, the story is driven by themes of gossip, shame, and loneliness...engrossing reading experience for fans of noir literary mysteries." —Booklist
"Lee Martin is a brilliant chronicler of small-town life, and in The Evening Shades, set in 1972, he vividly portrays two midwestern communities in the aftermath of a child's mysterious murder. Nevertheless, Martin's ultimate concerns are beyond time and place as he delves into the deepest, and often most unsettling, mysteries of all—those of the human heart." —Ron Rash, author of New York Times bestselling novel, Serena
"Who would guess that a cowardly math teacher, fleeing from dubious crimes, and a long time spinster, guilty of fraudulent promises to her library, would fall truly in love? Certainly not their neighbours in Mt. Gilead, nor this reader. The Evening Shades is gorgeously written and suspenseful in the best way. Martin makes us care deeply about his vivid characters. An absorbing novel from a writer at the height of his powers." —Margot Livesey, author of The Road from Belhaven
This information about The Evening Shades was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Lee Martin is the author of five novels, including The Bright Forever, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. His writing has appeared in numerous publications including Harper's, Ms Magazine, The Georgia Review, and The Kenyon Review, and his work has been anthologized in The Best American Essays, and The Best American Mystery Stories. His books have been widely translated, and won numerous awards, including a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers award. He teaches in the MFA Program at The Ohio State University.
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