
Based on a true story, Orpheus Builds a Girl is a novel of sisterly love, sinister obsession, and the battle for control of the story. A dark, chilling debut novel from award-winning writer Heather Parry. German doctor Wilhelm Von Tore shares with the reader the story of his one true ove; a love written in the stars, decades in the making, a love so strong it transcended death itself. When Wilhelm emigrates to America he carries with him a vision of a dark-haired beauty, presented to him in his dreams by his beloved late Grandmother. In Key West, Florida, a beautiful young woman is taken to him in the grip of illness, and he recognises her immediately as his promised bride. Despite his efforts, the sickness takes hold and his beloved slips away from him. But Wilhelm will not be kept from his destiny, not even by death. Using research compiled over decades, he sets about attempting to restore his love to her body, so that they might be together forever. But there's another voice in this story: Gabriela, and she will not let this version of events go unchallenged. From between the cracks in Wilhelm's story Gabriela recounts her own memory of her sister Luciana, a fiery and difficult young woman, and the madman who robbed her from her grave.
Author

Heather Parry is a fiction writer and editor originally from Rotherham, South Yorkshire. She is the author of two books - a novel, Orpheus Builds a Girl, and a short story collection, This Is My Body, Given For You. She won the 2016 Bridge Award for an Emerging Writer, Cove Park's 2017 Emerging Writer residency, the Laxfield Literary Launch Prize in 2021 and was a Hawthornden Fellow in 2021. Heather lives in Glasgow with her partner and their cats, Ernesto and Fidel.