Eden Close

Anita Shreve

Andrew, an advertising executive in his mid-30s, returns to his hometown in upstate New York for his mother's funeral. He does not intend to stay in the slow rural backwater he left seventeen years before. But the dreams and memories persist and in the darkened farmhouse he relives that hot, bloody night when Eden Close was blinded -- by the same gun that killed her father.

The enigmatic Eden had been Andrew's childhood companion. Together the two roamed summer cornfields, smoked their first forbidden cigarettes, skated, fished and fought until the tomboy turned temptress -- then their friendship ended. Now, despite warnings, Andrew is drawn again to this lost, blind girl of his youth, drawn to save her from the cruel neglect she has endured for seventeen sightless years without him. But first he must discover the grisly truth about that night . . .