Synopsis
** Longlisted for The Center for Fiction's best debut novel of 2019 **
With the hypnotic intensity of Emily Fridlund’s The History of Wolves and Fiona McFarlane’s The Night Guest, Katherine Forbes Riley has created a mesmerizing love story, in lush, gorgeous prose, that examines art, science, and the magic of human chemistry.
"Teeming with lush imagery and mystical settings, and brimming with alluring magical realism, Riley’s tale is a beguiling journey of discovery and recovery.” — Booklist
Haunting and lyrical, The Bobcat is Katherine Forbes Riley’s magical debut novel in which Laurelie, a young art student who suffers in the aftermath of a sexual assault, has grown progressively more isolated and fearful. She transfers from her busy city university to a small college in rural Vermont, where she retreats into her vivid imagination, experiencing the world through her art. Most comfortable in the company of the child for whom she babysits, and most at ease in the woods, Laurelie has shunned any connection with her peers.
One day, while exploring the woods, she and her young charge encounter an injured pregnant bobcat – and the hiker who has been following it for hundreds of miles. In the hiker and his feline companion Laurelie recognizes someone as reclusive and wary as herself. The hiker, too, finds human companionship painful to endure, yet he is drawn to wounded Laurelie the way he is drawn to the bobcat. As Laurelie moves toward recovery and reconnection she also finds her voice as an artist, and a sense of purpose, maybe even a future, comes into sight. Then the child goes missing in the woods, threatening the bobcat, the hiker, and the fragile peace Laurelie has constructed.
About the Author
Katherine Forbes Riley is a writer and computational linguist in Vermont. She is represented by Pamela Malpas of the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency in New York City. Her debut novel, THE BOBCAT, will be published by Arcade/Skyhorse in June 2019. Katherine's creative writing appears in the Wigleaf 2018 top 50 list, as well as numerous other literary journals, including Buffalo Almanack, from whom she received the Inkslinger's Award for Creative Excellence. She received her BA from Dartmouth College and her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, and has published over 40 academic articles in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. For the 2016-2017 academic year she was a visiting writer and fellow traveler at the American Academy in Rome; her husband, painter Enrico Riley, was a Rome Prize recipient.
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