"Evocative, Layered, smart, and astonishing. The Lace Reader is a fever dream of a novel that will haunt me for a long time."
Joshilyn Jackson
"Prepare to meet strange, brave, bruised, electrically alive women...Prepare to be riveted by their story."
Marisa de los Santos, author of Belong to Me
The Lace Reader is that rare thing -- a literary page-turner, worthy for its story and for its art.
Tom Jenks - Narrative Magazine
Barry has created a world within The Lace Reader that is a rollercoaster of emotions and self-discovery. We see Towner Whitney's world spread out for us like a piece of lace - which threads lead toward the answers the characters and the readers seek, and which ones are tricksters, leading to a dead end. The Lace Reader keeps us following the patterns until the very last words of the last page. There is no way to put it down until you have read it all. Please do yourselves a favor and pick up The Lace Reader soon.
A Gaggle of Book Reviews
A captivating debut. Barry excels at capturing the feel of small town life, and balances action with close looks at the characters' inner worlds. Her pacing and use of different perspectives show tremendous skill and will keep readers captivated all the way through.
Publishers Weekly Starred Review - A book of outstanding quality.
The Lace Reader is a terrific paranormal police procedural. The story line is fast-paced and Brunonia Barry provides an enjoyable mystery in which relativity is not an exact science. The Lace Reader is a winner.
Harriet Klausner, The Mystery Gazette
The Lace Reader pulled me in right away. The history of Salem and lace making entwined with the story of Towner Whitney and the strange group of characters kept me glued to this book to the end.
Gerry Hartsoe – Armchair Interviews
To read Gerry’s entire review, click here.
The Lace Reader is a joyful ride and those in the boat won’t regret it.
Tami Jo Nix - The Madera Tribune
To read Tami Jo’s entire review, click here.
The Lace Reader
Reviewed by Gerry Hartsoe
The Whitney women can all read lace, but Towner Whitney doesn’t want any part of it, and has left Salem Massachusetts and Yellow Dog Island to get away from all the bad memories of her childhood home and the lace readings. Living in L.A. she has no intention of returning.
The book starts when she receives a call from her brother telling her that her 80-something-year-old Great Aunt Eva is missing and she must return home. Towner is recovering from a surgical procedure and had been thinking of the gift that her Great Aunt Eva had recently sent to her. It was a lace-making pillow, used for making Ipswich lace. The lace making and the reading of lace had been a tradition of the Whitney women, and Towner was no exception. Although she wants no part of it anymore, she loves her aunt and feels she has to face her bad memories and go home. Salem and Yellow Dog Island are places filled with fearful bad memories.
Towner returns after being away for over 15 years and is immediately entrenched in all the troubles of the past. It is interesting to follow the writing of author Barry as she writes through the eyes of Towner, who sometimes lives in her dreams of the past. The story is kept fresh with trying to determine if what Towner is thinking is real, or the memories from childhood twisted over time.
Of course there is the love interest in Rafferty, the detective who is assigned to the case, as well as all the other quirky characters. Salem women who are Witches and selling their wares in the small shops on the square, and the women of Yellow Dog Island and their lace, making kept this book moving along nicely.
The Lace Reader is quite an interesting book. It pulled me in right away by including an excerpt from The Lace Readers Guide at the beginning of each chapter. The Salem history, entwined with the story of Towner and the strange group of characters kept me glued to this book to the end.
Armchair Interviews says: Women, lace, and a missing older lady makeup an interesting read.
From our armchair to your...
The Lace Reader
Reviewed by Tami Jo Nix - The Madera Tribune
"The Lace Reader," a new novel by Brunonia Barry, chronicles the lives of the Whitney family, a talented group of clairvoyants who can tell the future. Instead of tea leaves or Tarot cards, these women can tell a person's past, present and future through the loops and swirls of handmade lace.
Set in modern day Salem, Mass., the site of the notorious witch trials of the 1600s, part of the Whitney family lives on a small island in Salem's port to the Atlantic Ocean. On Yellow Dog Island there is more going on than meets the eye.
The primary voice of the narrative is that of Sophyia Whitney who goes by the name "Towner," because she can't stand the sound of her own name. Half of a set of twins, 38-year-old Towner has had severe emotional trauma that began in her teenage years. At age 17, she fled her island home for the California coast, trying to put as much distance between her and her problems as possible.
When her favorite Aunt Eva, a local lace reader and operator of a tea room, goes missing, Towner returns to the scene of her childhood and must face all the demons that entails.
She is forced to remember parts of her life that she thought were forever gone through treatment with psychotropic drugs and electric-shock therapy.
When she gets home, she finds that her mother, May Whitney, has turned New England lace making into a cottage industry using it as therapy to help victims of domestic abuse and their children escape their abusive husbands. Serving as a modern day "Underground Railroad," the women are able to flee to other parts of the country or Canada to make a new life free of the oppressive and abusive treatment of their husbands.
There are many twists and turns in the story that includes flashbacks to Towner's childhood, teenage years and life on Yellow Dog Island. It is a joyful ride and those in the boat won't regret it.
Published by Flap Jacket Press, "The Lace Reader" has a Sept. 1 release date.
