The Tell

An elegant and haunting novel of love and family, The Tell demands that we reconsider our notions of marriage—duty, compromise, betrayal, and the choice to stand by or leave the ones we love

For Mira and Owen, a young, childless couple living in Providence, marital and financial troubles are simmering just below the surface—until Wilton Deere, a wealthy, over-the-hill actor, moves in next door. With no friends to speak of and an estranged daughter to win back, the desperate Wilton inserts himself into the younger couple’s lives. As stresses at work and home take their toll, Mira disappears secretly to casinos and slot machines, accompanied by Wilton. In time, her escapism turns to full-on addiction, threatening a marital bond that is fraying by the day. Adrift and alone, Owen finds himself with nowhere to turn but to the beautiful and mysterious Anya, Wilton’s daughter, who is testing her ability to trust her father after years apart.

As Owen and Mira’s marriage reaches what can only be the breaking point, Wilton suddenly disappears. The two must come together to find him and confront the new reality of their relationship —complete with sobering lessons learned but perhaps, if they can weather a storm of their own making, none the weaker for it.

The Tell is a book about risks: of marriage, of dependence, of responsibility, of living in the past. Told with equal parts suspense, sympathy, and psychological complexity, it shows us the intimate and shifting ways we reveal ourselves before we act, and what we assume yet don’t know about the people we love.

Hester Kaplan is the author of The Edge of Marriage, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and Kinship Theory, a novel. Her short stories have been included in The Best American Short Stories series. She teaches in Lesley University's MFA Program in Creative Writing and lives in Rhode Island.