13 1/2

Book Description

With 13 ½, Nevada Barr, New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning Anna Pigeon novels, has written a taut and terrifying psychological thriller. It carries the reader from the horrifying 1970s murder spree of a child-- dubbed "Butcher Boy" by a shocked public--in Rochester, Minnesota, to Polly, the abused daughter of Mississippi "trailer trash," to post-Katrina New Orleans.

In Jackson Square in the French Quarter a tarot card reader told Polly Deschamps she would be a success. Thirty years later, Polly is a respected professor of literature with good friends and her own home--a safe life for her and her two daughters.

Butcher Boy, released on his seventeenth birthday, shook the snow from his boots and headed south.

New Orleans, a Mecca for runaways then and now, offers sanctuary but never forgiveness.

When Polly falls in love with Marshall Marchand, a restoration architect who is helping to rebuild her adopted city, shadows of the past rise out of the poisoned ground of New Orleans as thick and deadly as the toxic waters of the flood.

Like history, some crimes are doomed to repeat themselves. Evil stays the same, only the victims' names change. As two broken pasts collide in an uncertain present, Polly is determined that her children's names will never be on that list.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Reaching beyond her successful Anna Pigeon series (Borderline, etc.), bestseller Barr comes up with the brass ring: a stand-alone psychological thriller with grit, teeth and heart. At 15, Polly Farmer escapes an alcoholic mother and a trailer-park no-future, hitchhikes to New Orleans and makes a life for herself as an English professor. Polly, divorced with two daughters, romantically intersects with handsome restoration architect Marshall Marchand--who's really Dylan Raines, who was incarcerated as the 11-year-old Butcher Boy who axe-murdered his parents 25 years earlier in Minnesota. As Barr artfully unfolds this mystery of wickedness and pain in eerie post-Katrina New Orleans, she tackles a multitude of societal evils, from psychiatric drug abuse to the juvenile justice system, but her central conflict, Polly's fierce determination to keep her daughters safe while trying to believe in the man she loves, makes this a terrifying, utterly convincing glimpse into the abyss. (Oct.) Copyright ® Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine In a departure from her Anna Pigeon adventure novels, Barr has penned a thriller that delves deep into her characters' dark psychologies and traumas. As in her popular series, this dual narrative features a gripping plot, polished writing, and an element of suspense. At its center, however, 13 1/2 focuses on the power of love; the reconciliation of shaky relationships--and truths--between husbands and wives, brothers, and friends; and the shaking out of past demons. Critics were also pleased to read about fascinating, real-life murders. In sum, 13 1/2 "shows a new side of Barr's storytelling talents" (South Florida Sun-Sentinel).