Hidden: A Novel - Tapa dura

Bill Roorbachauthor of "The Smallest Color" and "Big Bend"Good news: Paul Jaskunas is here, and he's a wonderful new voice in fiction, lyrical, smart, and frightening. Hidden moves us past mere trauma to the very heart of a woman all but murdered. We watch, spellbound, as her intelligence and sensitivity and pure grace float her back again to the world of the living, where there's a mystery to solve, and even deeper wounds to heal.

As unnerving as it is mesmerizing, "Hidden" is an evocative, emotionally charged domestic drama -- a willful and traumatized woman's painful search for the truth about the man who assaulted her one summer night. Six years after the attack, Maggie Wilson receives a call from the prosecutor who helped put her husband in jail after Maggie identified him as the man who nearly killed her. Told that another inmate has confessed to the crime and that her ex-husband will be freed, the shock plunges Maggie into memories of her stormy marriage to Nate Duke, the ambitious heir to a real estate company. Secluded in an old farmhouse that was her marital home, Maggie relives her marriage to Nate and his abusive treatment of her. But in her present, a very different man is haunting her -- the born-again convict who has confessed to the crime. As his story competes with hers, Maggie pores through trial transcripts, old journals, and photo albums, trying fruitlessly to remember exactly what happened.Written in spare, elegant prose, Paul Jaskunas's novel reads like a waking dream as Maggie is torn by the question -- was it Nate? Or was it this stranger who seems to know intimate details? And what will it cost her to discover the truth? A work of searing suspense written in the heroine's brave voice, "Hidden" is ultimately about a woman confronting the betrayal of her body and the ambiguity of her mind.