From one of America's most accomplished and acclaimed fiction writers, a chilling, spectacularly riveting novel based on a real life multiple murder by a con man who preyed on widows--a story that has haunted Jayne Anne Phillips for more than four decades.
From one of America's most accomplished and acclaimed fiction writers, a spectacularly riveting novel based on a real-life multiple murder by a con man who preyed on widows-- a story that has haunted Jayne Anne Phillips for more than four decades
In Chicago in 1931, Asta Eicher, mother of three, is lonely and despairing, pressed for money after the sudden death of her husband. She begins to receive seductive letters from a chivalrous, elegant man named Harry Powers, who promises to cherish and protect her, ultimately to marry her and to care for her and her children. Weeks later, all four Eichers are dead.
Emily Thornhill, one of the few women journalists in the Chicago press, becomes deeply invested in understanding what happened to this beautiful family, particularly to the youngest child, Annabel, an enchanting girl with a precocious imagination and sense of magic. Bold and intrepid, Emily allies herself with a banker who is wracked by guilt for not saving Asta. Emily goes to West Virginia to cover the murder trial and to investigate the story herself, accompanied by a charming and unconventional photographer who is equally drawn to the case.
Driven by secrets of their own, the heroic characters in this magnificent tale will stop at nothing to ensure that Powers is convicted. Mesmerizing and deeply moving, Quiet Dell is a tragedy, a love story, and a tour de force of obsession and imagination from one of America's most celebrated writers.
Show more
From one of America's most accomplished and acclaimed fiction writers, a chilling, spectacularly riveting novel based on a real life multiple murder by a con man who preyed on widows--a story that has haunted Jayne Anne Phillips for more than four decades.
From one of America's most accomplished and acclaimed fiction writers, a spectacularly riveting novel based on a real-life multiple murder by a con man who preyed on widows-- a story that has haunted Jayne Anne Phillips for more than four decades
In Chicago in 1931, Asta Eicher, mother of three, is lonely and despairing, pressed for money after the sudden death of her husband. She begins to receive seductive letters from a chivalrous, elegant man named Harry Powers, who promises to cherish and protect her, ultimately to marry her and to care for her and her children. Weeks later, all four Eichers are dead.
Emily Thornhill, one of the few women journalists in the Chicago press, becomes deeply invested in understanding what happened to this beautiful family, particularly to the youngest child, Annabel, an enchanting girl with a precocious imagination and sense of magic. Bold and intrepid, Emily allies herself with a banker who is wracked by guilt for not saving Asta. Emily goes to West Virginia to cover the murder trial and to investigate the story herself, accompanied by a charming and unconventional photographer who is equally drawn to the case.
Driven by secrets of their own, the heroic characters in this magnificent tale will stop at nothing to ensure that Powers is convicted. Mesmerizing and deeply moving, Quiet Dell is a tragedy, a love story, and a tour de force of obsession and imagination from one of America's most celebrated writers.
Show moreJayne Anne Phillips is the author of Lark and Termite, Motherkind, Shelter, and Machine Dreams, and the widely anthologized collections of stories, Fast Lanes and Black Tickets. A National Book Award and National Book Critic's Circle Award finalist, Phillips is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Bunting Fellowship, the Sue Kaufman Prize, and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She is Distinguished Professor of English and Director of the MFA Program at Rutgers-Newark, the State University of New Jersey, where she established The Writers At Newark Reading Series. Information, essays and text source photographs on her fiction can be viewed at JayneAnnePhillips.com.
"Phillips's plot is engaging, romantic, and fecund; her characters
are beautiful, accomplished, and good--except for the bad guy, who
is very bad indeed."--Publishers Weekly
"An extraordinary achievement, a mesmerizing blend of fact and
fiction that borrows from the historical record, including trial
transcripts and newspaper accounts, but is cloaked in the
shimmering language of a poet."--Associated Press
"Jayne Anne Phillips's unsettling latest, Quiet Dell, spins out
from a true crime story involving a 1930s-era-seducer--think Robert
Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter--who preys on a widow and her
children."--Vogue
"Phillips's prose is as haunting as the questions she raises about
the natures of sin, evil and grace."--Kirkus Reviews (starred
review)
"Quiet Dell has all the elements of a murder mystery, but its
emotional scope is larger and more complex. It combines a strange,
hypnotic and poetic power with the sharp tones of documentary
evidence. It offers a portrait of rural America in a time of crisis
and dramatizes the lives of a number of characters who are
fascinating and memorable."--Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn and
The Testament of Mary
"Gripping...Chilling...The novel's heartbeat is Emily, a Chicago
Tribune reporter covering Powers' arrest and trial...Quiet Dell
does what Emily can't, thoughtfully grafting a 21st-century
sensibility onto 20th-century ghastliness. Emily resists the
fetters placed on her as a journalist and a woman, while Eric, a
gay photographer who accompanies her, is a keen observer of
closeted life in the South. Phillips exposes the era's prejudices
less to render judgment than to show how cannily people like Emily
and Eric worked around them."--Mark Athitakis "Minneapolis Star
Tribune "
"Jayne Anne Phillips is one of the finest pure stylists in
contemporary literature, and she's found a story that sounds like a
perfect match for her talents."--Jeff Baker "Portland Oregonian
"
"[Quiet Dell's] success is due to a bold decision: Ms. Phillips has
written a serial killer novel in which the serial killer hardly
appears....Unabashed...There is a glowing beauty to the book's
brave, generous version of history."--Sam Sacks "The Wall Street
Journal "
"A mesmerizing novel drawn from the annals of infamous true
crime...Meticulous, engrossing and spellbinding."--Philip Turner
"The Great Gray Bridge "
"A novel of compelling impressions...Triumphant...[Jayne Anne
Phillips is] perceptive enough to hear, and respond to, the
smallest of humanity's sounds."--Erin McKnight "The Philadelphia
Review of Books "
"Hauntingly imagines the victims' hopes, dreams, and
terror...Phillips blends fact and fiction in a darkly poetic way:
The result is an absorbing novel that leaves us rooting for the
heroine Emily becomes--and mourning the lives the Eichers never got
to enjoy."--Arianna Davis "O, the Oprah Magazine "
"In Quiet Dell, Phillips mesmerizingly spins together fact and
fiction, vividly imagining the circumstances leading to their
deaths, and sets a young female reporter on the case to solve
it."--Elissa Schappell "Vanity Fair "
"In a brilliant fusion of fact and fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips has
written the novel of the year. It's the story of a serial killer's
crimes and capture, yes, but it's also a compulsively readable
story of how one brave woman faces up to acts of terrible violence
in order to create something good and strong in the aftermath.
Quiet Dell will be compared to In Cold Blood, but Phillips offers
something Capote could not: a heroine who lights up the dark places
and gives us hope in our humanity."--Stephen King
"Phillips, an acclaimed writer of largely contemporary fiction,
this time draws on history: a criminal case from the early
'30s....But if the factual underpinnings of this latest novel are
unusual for Phillips, her ability to transform them into a
fictionalized narrative place her at the top of her form. Phillips
has carefully inserted imagined private moments and just a few
fictional characters to create a story both splendid and
irreparably sad... As Phillips has proved throughout her decades of
fiction writing, there is evil in the world, but there are some who
will stand in its way."--Celia McGee "Chicago Tribune "
"Phillips' extensive reporting--she quotes from newspaper stories,
letters between Eicher and her 'suitor' and the trial
transcript--gives the book its considerable heft. And her creation
of a Chicago reporter named Emily Thornhill helps to frame the
story of the eight-decade-old event in a fresh way. Quiet Dell is a
smart combination of true crime, history and fiction tied together
with Phillips' seamlessly elegant writing....As the book proceeds
to its dark conclusion, Emily offers readers a glimpse of
light."--Amy Driscoll "Miami Herald "
"Phillips's effort to do justice -- aesthetic and moral -- to the
victims feels bold and honorable...moving, even
transporting...Phillips allows her own ample gifts to soar."--Leah
Hager Cohen "Boston Globe "
"Sometimes eerie and dreamlike, others grippingly tense, yet warmly
human, always written with beauty and emotional power, Quiet Dell
is a virtuoso performance by a highly original writer."--Colette
Bancroft "Tampa Bay Times "
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