Tuesday, April 19, 2016

"The Other Widow"

Susan Crawford grew up in Miami, Florida, where she spent her childhood adoring her older sister, reading mysteries in a hammock strung between two Banyan trees, and collecting lizards, baby skunks and other odd, exotic creatures.

She later moved to New York City and then to Boston before settling in Atlanta to raise three amazing daughters and to teach in various adult education settings. A member of The Atlanta Writers Club and The Village Writers, Crawford works for the Department of Technical and Adult Education and is a member of her local planning commission. She lives in Atlanta with her husband and a trio of rescue cats, where she enjoys reading books, writing books, rainy days, and spending time with the people she loves.

Crawford applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Other Widow, and reported the following:
From page 69:
She leans against the kitchen counter near the window. Her eyes blur out of focus at a backyard strewn with branches, brown and dead, like skeletons across the snow. Sometimes she hears Joe’s voice, feels him, like a buzzing underneath her skin. A background noise, like trains near the apartment she and Samuel had downtown when they first lived together. They were such a constant sound that almost right away she’d stopped hearing them. She only noticed late at night when they stopped running. She heard the absence of the trains, the silence, and Dorrie wonders if that’s what will happen when she stops hearing Joe.
On page 69 of The Other Widow, Dorrie, Joe’s girlfriend, and so the other widow, is reflecting on feeling the presence of her dead lover, knowing it won’t last forever. Although the book is a suspense, although Dorrie is in danger and struggling to stay one step ahead of her pursuer while she figures out what exactly is going on and who exactly is after her, she is also grieving. Unlike Joe’s real widow, she must hide her feelings. She doesn’t have the luxury of grief. We see glimpses of it in moments like the one depicted on page 69.
Visit Susan Crawford's website.

Writers Read: Susan Crawford (March 2015).

--Marshal Zeringue