Kiss of the WolfJoanie Mucherino, whose husband suddenly abandoned her and her eleven-year-old son, Todd, is trying to cope while dealing with her comically tactless and intrusive Italian family. To complicate matters, Joanie is now "available" in the eyes of Bruno Minea, a family friend whose twenty-year passion for her has been unwavering and faintly frightening. All of these relationships are transformed when Joanie and Todd kill an acquaintance in a hit-and-run accident and then discover - step by step, to their horror - that they will keep their act a secret. It soon becomes clear to Joanie and Todd that they have, through this accident and the chain of events in its aftermath, connected themselves to something thoroughly sinister. What follows brings into focus intense conflicts as large as those between religion and individual responsibility and as particular as those between mother and son. Joanie is forced to reassess her capacity for wrongdoing and, most important, forced to see that she is capable of being the architect of her son's own anguished guilt and silence. In his most spare and suspenseful novel, Jim Shepard brilliantly chronicles one woman's irreparable position, confronting us with the most disastrous inclinations of the human heart. |
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antipasto Arby's Audrey B.B. King barking Brendan Bruno asked Bruno looked Buick C'mon called church coffee Dodge Dart downstairs driveway Elena eyes face father feel felt Field of Dreams fingers floor front fucking garage Gary gave goin gonna go gotta hair head hear heard Hello hit the light holding hung Joanie asked Joanie looked Joanie's kiss kitchen knew lacrosse helmet leaned legs light listened living room Lou Monte Merritt Parkway Minnesota Viking mortal sin mother mouse Mouse Hunt mouth movie Nancy night Nina asked nodded okay opened police pulled put his hand rubbed sacrilege Sandro shook shrugged side sitting someone sorry sound stairs Steven Seagal stood stopped Strangolagalli talk tell thing thought Todd's told Tommy Monteleone took trying turned waiting wanna watched What's Where'd window worried Yardbirds Yeah yogurt