In the Lonely Backwater, Valerie Nieman
In the Lonely Backwater, Valerie Nieman
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In the Lonely Backwater

Author: Valerie Nieman

Narrator: Samantha Desz

Unabridged: 8 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/08/2023

Synopsis

All seventeen-year-old Maggie Warshauer wants is to leave her stifled life in Filliyaw Creek behind and head to college. An outsider at school and uncertain of her own sexual identity, Maggie longs to start again somewhere new. Inspired by a long-dead biologist's journals, scientific-minded Maggie spends her days sailing, exploring, and categorizing life around her. But when her beautiful cousin Charisse disappears on prom night and is found dead at the marina where Maggie lives, Maggie's plans begin to unravel. A mysterious stranger begins stalking her and a local detective on the case leaves her struggling to hold on to her secrets—her father's alcoholism, her mother's abandonment, a boyfriend who may or may not exist, and her own actions on prom night. As the detective gets closer to finding the truth, and Maggie's stalker is closing in, she is forced to comes to terms with the one person who might hold the answers—herself.

About Valerie Nieman

Valerie Nieman's fifth novel, In the Lonely Backwater, draws on all the people she's been-a wandering child, uncertain teen, farmer, newspaper reporter, teacher, sailor. To the Bones, a genre-bending novel about the coal industry and its effects on Appalachia, was published by West Virginia University Press in 2019 and was a finalist for the Manly Wade Wellman Award. Like her earlier novels, Blood Clay, Survivors, and Neena Gathering, the stories are set in North Carolina, and West Virginia. She has also published short fiction and nonfiction. Her third poetry collection, Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse, debuted at Coney Island Museum and was runner-up for the Brockman-Campbell Prize. Her poetry has appeared widely, from Poetry to Crannog to the Georgia Review, and has been published in numerous anthologies, including Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods and Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. She has held state and NEA creative writing fellowships. A graduate of West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte and a former journalist, she is professor emeritus of creative writing at North Carolina A&T State University.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Tonya on November 20, 2022

Who killed Charisse? Is her nature loving cousin to blame? The reader is immediately thrust into the lonely, haunting adolescent life of Maggie. Living on a dilapidated houseboat, Maggie shares her rural, observational life filled with nature, loneliness and mystery. The details of her cousin’s deat......more

Goodreads review by Marjorie on February 10, 2022

Oh, what a splendid misery teenaged Maggie feels, and what a splendid character! Abandoned by her self-absorbed pretty mother, an outsider at school, Maggie takes comfort in an obsessive study of the daily life of Carl Linaeus, the historic creator of species and family organizational categories for......more

Goodreads review by Leslie aka StoreyBook Reviews on May 09, 2022

This coming-of-age novel is coupled with an unreliable narrator, Maggie. Maggie is trying to figure out who she is in this small town with few friends and an obsession with nature fueled by a book by Carl Linaeus that details botany and insects and other parts of nature. Her living situation isn't t......more

Goodreads review by Lauren on March 17, 2022

Once you step into Maggie's head, you won't want to come back out. She's fascinating--a gifted sailor, a loner, a deep lover and observer of the natural world. What she isn't is honest with herself, or anyone else, seemingly. My favorite unreliable narrator ever in a story that keeps twisting, turni......more

Goodreads review by Landis on March 13, 2022

Lake Living on the Teenage Edge of Survival This first person narrative of the lonely life of Maggie Warshauer, a high school student living in a boathouse with her father and helping work the docks and marina store is seemingly peaceful until it’s not. When there is a murder of another high school s......more

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