Valerie Martin's third novel is the story of a deadly love triangle set in New Orleans. Emma Miller, married and the mother of a five-year-old daughter, is obsessed by her increasingly sadomasochistic relationship with Pascal Toussaint, who is himself fixated upon Claire D'Anjou, a young novice with a passion for God so powerful that she has been sent home to New Orleans by the convent for a year's test of her vocation. In a city overrun by rats and awash in a mysterious plague, freedom and the consuming desire for self-sacrifice are pursued to harrowing, ultimately redemptive consequence. New Orleans - alluring, pleasure-loving, mesmerizing - remains both a force in its own right and a backdrop to the erotic contests at the center of the novel that established Martin as a major American voice.
Author
Valerie Martin is the author of nine novels, including Trespass, Mary Reilly, Italian Fever, and Property, three collections of short fiction, and a biography of St. Francis of Assisi, titled Salvation. She has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as the Kafka Prize (for Mary Reilly) and Britain’s Orange Prize (for Property). Martin’s last novel, The Confessions of Edward Day was a New York Times notable book for 2009. A new novel The Ghost of the Mary Celeste is due from Nan Talese/Random House in January 2014, and a middle-grade book Anton and Cecil, Cats at Sea, co-written with Valerie’s niece Lisa Martin, will be out from Algonquin in October of 2013. Valerie Martin has taught in writing programs at Mt. Holyoke College, Univ. of Massachusetts, and Sarah Lawrence College, among others. She resides in Dutchess County, New York and is currently Professor of English at Mt. Holyoke College.
