A Novel
by Barbara Graham
A seven-year-old boy inexplicably recalls the memories of a missing 22-year-old musician in this psychological thriller about the fierce love between mothers and sons across lifetimes, a work of gripping suspense with a supernatural twist that will mesmerize fans of Chloe Benjamin and Lisa Jewell.
Helen Bird will stop at nothing to find Henry, her musician son who has mysteriously disappeared in upstate New York. Though the cops believe Henry's absence is voluntary, Helen knows better.
While she searches for him—joined finally by police—Jonah is born to Lucie and Matt Pressman of Manhattan. Lucie does all she can to be the kind of loving, attentive mother she never had, but can't stop Jonah's night terrors or his obsession with the imaginary "other mom and dog" he insists are real.
Whether Jonah's anxiety is caused by nature or nurture—or something else entirely—is the propulsive mystery at the heart of the novel.
All hell breaks loose when the Pressmans rent a summer cottage in Aurora Falls, where Helen lives. How does Jonah, at seven, know so much about Henry, Helen's still-missing son? Is it just a bizarre coincidence? An expression of Jung's collective unconscious? Or could Jonah be the reincarnation of Henry?
Faced with more questions than answers, Helen and Lucie set out to make sense of the insensible, a heart-stopping quest that forces them to redefine not just what it is to be a mother or a human being, but the very nature of life—and death—because of what Jonah knows.
"In Graham's genre-bending fiction debut, two women's lives become intertwined in a heartrending story about grief, trauma, and the love between mothers and sons. ... The emotional payoff [is] well worth the effort. For mystery fans who like to ponder the larger issues." —Booklist
"A spellbinding literary thriller packed with psychological suspense and profound questions about motherhood, trauma, and how death illuminates life." —Amy Tan, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and Where the Past Begins
"I was hooked from the very beginning by the wonderful characters, unique plot, and mystical influences of this fine, complex thriller." —Anne Lamott, bestselling author of Bird by Bird and Dusk, Night, Dawn
This information about What Jonah Knew 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.
Barbara Graham is an essayist, playwright, and author who has written for Time; O, The Oprah Magazine; Glamour; More; National Geographic Traveler; and Vogue. She is a columnist for Grandparents.com and has two granddaughters.
Happy Land
by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family's secret ties to a vanished American Kingdom.
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