{"product_id":"lost-in-the-forest-isbn-9780345469595","title":"Lost in the Forest","description":"For nearly two decades, since the publication of her iconic first novel, \u003ci\u003eThe Good Mother,\u003c\/i\u003e Sue Miller has distinguished herself as one of our most elegant and widely celebrated chroniclers of family life, with a singular gift for laying bare the interior lives of her characters. In each of her novels, Miller has written with exquisite precision about the experience of grace in daily life–the sudden, epiphanic recognition of the extraordinary amid the ordinary–as well as the sharp and unexpected motions of the human heart away from it, toward an unruly netherworld of upheaval and desire. But never before have Miller’s powers been keener or more transfixing than they are in \u003ci\u003eLost in the Forest,\u003c\/i\u003e a novel set in the vineyards of Northern California that tells the story of a young girl who, in the wake of a tragic accident, seeks solace in a damaging love affair with a much older man.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEva, a divorced and happily remarried mother of three, runs a small bookstore in a town north of San Francisco. When her second husband, John, is killed in a car accident, her family’s fragile peace is once again overtaken by loss. Emily, the eldest, must grapple with newfound independence and responsibility. Theo, the youngest, can only begin to fathom his father’s death. But for Daisy, the middle child, John’s absence opens up a world of bewilderment, exposing her at the onset of adolescence to the chaos and instability that hover just beyond the safety of parental love. In her sorrow, Daisy embarks on a harrowing sexual odyssey, a journey that will cast her even farther out onto the harsh promontory of adulthood and lost hope.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith astonishing sensuality and immediacy, \u003ci\u003eLost in the Forest\u003c\/i\u003e moves through the most intimate realms of domestic life, from grief and sex to adolescence and marriage. It is a stunning, kaleidoscopic evocation of a family in crisis, written with delicacy and masterful care. For her lifelong fans and those just discovering Sue Miller for the first time, here is a rich and gorgeously layered tale of a family breaking apart and coming back together again: Sue Miller at her inimitable best.Sue Miller is the best-selling author of the novels \u003ci\u003eThe World Below, While I Was Gone, The Distinguished Guest, For Love, Family Pictures,\u003c\/i\u003e  and \u003ci\u003eThe Good Mother;\u003c\/i\u003e the story collection \u003ci\u003eInventing the Abbotts;\u003c\/i\u003e and the memoir \u003ci\u003eThe Story of My Father.\u003c\/i\u003e She lives in Boston.Emily telephoned, his older daughter. \"Can you come get us?\" she  said. \"It's an emergency.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs usual, she didn't greet him, she didn't say hello at the start of  the call. And also as usual, this bothered him, he felt a familiar  pull of irritation at her voice, her tone. But even as he was  listening to her, he was focused on steering the truck around the  sharp curves in the narrow road, around several small heaps of rock  that had slid down the steep hillside: he was feeling the pleasure he  always took in the way the slanted afternoon light played on the  yellowed grass and reddened leaves left in the vineyards, in the way  the air smelled. He kept his voice neutral as he responded. \"When?  Now?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the background, behind her, Mark could hear someone give a sudden  whoop. Festivities, he thought. As ever. Eva's face rose in his  mind--his ex-wife. At the least excuse, there was a gathering at her  house: to celebrate a birthday--reasonable enough; but also for a  project completed, a team victory, a skill accomplished. You learned  to ride a bike, you got a party thrown for you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Duh. Yes, Dad, now,\" Emily said. \"That's what I mean.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was headed north on 128 to a small vineyard he thought his crew  should harvest tomorrow. He needed to check the grapes. But he could  probably get Angel to do it if he had to. His windows were open. The  noise of the rushing air made his daughter's voice on the car phone  sound distant.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"So?\" she said. \"Can you?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf his younger daughter, Daisy, had ever called him because of an  emergency, it would have been a child's crisis--not making the  basketball team, needing a ride somewhere that her mother or  stepfather couldn't provide. But with Emily, this emergency was  likely to be at least slightly serious, an emergency in near-adult  terms. Terms he might even be sympathetic with.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut she would be taking charge again, and this was something he and  his ex-wife had agreed that she should be discouraged--no,  freed--from doing so often. He cleared his throat. \"Maybe I should  talk to your mom,\" he said. Yes. The approach to take.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Dad!\" she objected. He didn't answer for a long moment, and as if in  response to this, her voice had changed when she spoke again. She  sounded younger: \"Mom can't talk right now. That's why we need you.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd with those words, we need you, it was settled. To be needed.  Well. Mark thought of Emily's delicate oval face, her regular, pretty  features, her curly dark hair, so like Eva's--all the things that  were lovely about her. All the things that didn't piss him off.  \"Okay,\" he said. \"Okay, as it happens, I can come. As it happens, I  will.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe wouldn't be charmed. \"Now?\" she said impatiently.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Now. Or, gimme ten or so.\" He was slowing, and as he pulled into a  turnaround by the roadside, the truck bounced and his tires crunched  on the dusty gravel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Okay.\" She sighed, in relief it seemed. \"Just honk, though,\" she  said. \"We'll come out. Oh, and Dad?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Yeah?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It's for overnight.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt could not be for overnight. He had plans. He had a date. He was  going to get laid. \"Okay, sunshine,\" he said. \"We'll work it all out.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe sighed again and hung up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwenty minutes or so later, when he pulled up at the curb in front of  his ex-wife's large Victorian house, the door opened before he hit  the horn and his younger daughter staggered out onto the wide porch,  carrying her sleeping bag, her pack an oversize hump on her back.  Daisy was barefoot. Her long brown legs were exposed nearly to the  crotch in cutoff jeans--legs that were beginning to look less like  sticks and more like a woman's, he noted. Emily came out the door  after her, turned backward as if to fuss with something behind her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwo pretty, dark, young women, one tall, one short: his daughters. He  got out of the truck to go and help them. As he started up the walk,  he saw Theo emerging from the house behind Emily. The little boy, not  yet three, was carrying a brown paper grocery bag by its handles.  Something stuck out of it--a pillow? a blanket? He spotted Mark and  smiled. Now Emily took Theo's hand to help him down the wide porch  stairs. He paused on each one, and the bag plopped slowly from step  to step behind him as he descended.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMark met them on the walk. \"Hey,\" he said. He kissed each girl on her  head. They smelled identical, a ladylike herbal perfume: shared  shampoo. He took Daisy's sleeping bag from her. \"Theo!\" he said, and  extended his hand down to him. \"To what do we owe this pleasure?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I'll explain it all to you,\" Emily called back. She had moved ahead  of them down the walk, between the orderly gray-green procession of  rosemary plants. She was tossing her stuff into the open back of the  truck.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"So he's supposed to spend the night too?\" Mark asked Daisy. Theo was  not his son. Theo was his ex-wife's son, by her second marriage. He  liked Theo. He was, in fact, charmed by him--he knew him well from  various extended-family events--but he had never before been asked to  babysit for him. And actually, no one had even asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDaisy shrugged. She looked, as she often did, sullen. Or evasive. Her  face was narrower than Emily's, her nose still slightly too big on  it--she was fourteen--her eyebrows darker and thick. She had shot up  within the last two years, and now she was only a few inches shorter  than Mark. She carried it badly, trying to hide it. Mark had worried  when she was younger that she would be plain, which seemed to him an  almost unbearably sad thing--a plain woman. Within the last six  months or so, though, her face had changed and strengthened, and he  saw that that wouldn't be the case. That she might, in fact, be  better-looking than Emily in the end, more striking. It had made him  easier around her, he realized.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey had caught up to Emily, who said again, \"I'll explain it later.\"  She sounded irritated, as though she were the adult and he a nagging  child. She took Theo's hand and led him to the door of the truck's  cab.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMark went around to the driver's side. He opened his door and stood  there looking across the cab's wide seat, waiting for Emily to look  back at him. She wouldn't. Or she didn't. First she was helping the  little boy clamber into the truck; now she climbed up herself and was  busy buckling him in. When she finally raised her eyes and met her  father's, he was ready. He lifted his hands. \"Hey, Em,\" he said. \"You  will admit--\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Daddy, it's an emergency. A real emergency.\" Her eyes, he noted now,  were red-rimmed, their lids swollen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTheo looked over at him and nodded. \"It's a mergency,\" he said, and  inserted his thumb into his mouth with an air of finality.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDaisy squeezed in next to Emily, and Mark got in and started the  truck. He pulled into the street. After nearly a full minute had  passed, he asked, \"So, the nature of this emergency is . . . ?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe could feel Emily's gaze on him, and he looked at her. She was  frowning--her dark eyebrows made fierce lines. She shook her head.  \"We can't . . . we shouldn't . . . talk about it now.\" She gestured  at Theo, sitting between them, watching them soberly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMark nodded. After another long moment he said, \"But at some point it  will be revealed.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Yeah,\" she said. She turned away, and when he looked over again, he  saw that she and Daisy were holding hands. What the hell was going  on? Daisy's mouth hung open stupidly, as though she'd been sucker  punched.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey drove in near-total silence the whole way to his house.  Everyone's eyes stayed devoutly on the road, as though the familiar  scenes rolling past--the valley as it widened out and spread the fall  colors of its vineyards before them, the deep green of the hills  riding along above it all--were some new and fascinating nature  movie. Once Daisy said in a near-whisper, \"Are those pills supposed  to knock her out or something?\" and Emily shrugged. That was it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKnock who out? Not Eva, he thought. He imagined her, his  ex-wife--small, dark, quick moving, graceful. Her sudden sexy smile.  Not Eva.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAbove Calistoga, he turned in at the unmarked dirt road to his house.  There were sparse, newly planted vineyards on either side of it. He  had to swerve and dance the truck to avoid the ruts. He could feel  Theo's weight swing against his side. After about a quarter of a  mile, he pulled into his driveway and then up onto the cement pad  where one day he planned to build a garage.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs soon as he cut the engine, they could hear the dogs barking in the  house. The children started to unbuckle their seat belts, and he  swung himself out of the truck. He began to gather their possessions  from the back. They came and stood behind him--silent, oddly passive,  waiting for their things to be put into their hands.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe led the way. When he opened the back door, the dogs shot out and  started jumping around, abruptly quieted by their joy in being  released. Their heavy tails whacked everyone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTheo made a little noise of terror and delight and stepped between  Mark's legs, gripping his thighs. Mark put his hands on the boy's  narrow shoulders, and was instantly startled--and then aware of being  startled.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhy? Why did it feel so strange to touch the little boy?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePerhaps because he had anticipated the way the girls felt when they  were Theo's size, when he had loved to touch them, to hold them.  Theo's body was wiry and tense, utterly unlike theirs at the same  age. It felt hot with energy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It's okay, big guy,\" Mark said gently. \"They like you. They like  kids like you.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTheo looked up at Mark, wide-eyed and alarmed. \"They would like to  eat me?\" he asked. He was lighter-haired, lighter-skinned than the  girls, and this difference somehow struck Mark as sad.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"No, no, no,\" Mark said. \"They like to lick you, and play with you.  You'll see. They're nice.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe squatted by Theo and held his own hand out to Fanny to be licked.  When Theo imitated him after a moment, Fanny's long, rough tongue  came out and stroked the boy's hand too. He snatched his arm back and  jigged a little in fear and pleasure, a prancey running in place. He  wore miniature red high-top sneakers. His striped socks had slid down  almost entirely into them. One of his knees was thickly scabbed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEmily and Daisy had disappeared immediately into the house, to put  their things away, Mark assumed. He stood up. Theo grabbed his hand,  and walked right next to Mark, into the kitchen, through it,  virtually riding his left leg and talking all the while to the dogs:  \"No bite me! Bad dog! Bad, bad dog! No bite!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMark was feeling a rising, irritated frustration, which he didn't  want to focus on the little boy. He gestured across the living room,  toward the back of the house. \"Let's go figure out what everyone's up  to, shall we?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTheo looked up at Mark. \"Yah,\" he answered.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTheo shadowed him to the doorway of the back room. The girls' beds  nearly filled its narrow space. It was dark and underwatery in  here--the one window faced out into an overgrown evergreen shrub,  which Mark kept meaning to prune, and hadn't. The light that filtered  through it was weak and greenish. Daisy was carefully spreading her  unzipped bag out on her bed, as she always did. This was her strategy  to avoid making it, a chore she hated. Emily was already lying down,  one arm under her head, staring out the window at nothing. Ignoring  him, Mark felt.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A word with you, Em?\" he said, his voice carefully neutral.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBoth girls looked at him. They seemed startled, like sleepers he'd  wakened. He turned to his younger daughter. \"Daze, could you keep an  eye on Theo for a minute? He's scared of the dogs.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe nodded.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I not scared,\" Theo was instantly shrilling. \"I a big boy. I not scared.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs Mark and Emily stepped toward the doorway, Daisy, who had flopped  down onto her bed, was starting a game: \"How big are you, Theo? Big  as a . . . lion?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Yes!\" the boy cried.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs soon as Mark shut the door to his room, Emily sat down heavily at  the foot of his rumpled bed and said, \"Oh, Daddy, it's John. John's  dead.\" Her face twisted, and tears immediately began sliding down it,  as though she'd been waiting until this moment to allow herself her  full measure of grief.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"What do you mean?\" John was Eva's husband, the girls' stepfather.  Theo's father.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"He's dead, Daddy.\" Her hands came to her face now and covered her  opened mouth. She inhaled sharply through her fingers, and then  closed her eyes. \"He got hit . . . by a car. A car hit him.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMark pictured it. He pictured it wrong, as it turned out, but he saw  John then--his large body, bloody, slumped behind the wheel of his  ruined car. He saw him dead, though he didn't believe it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMark sat down next to his daughter and held her, and she wept quietly  and thoroughly, as he couldn't remember her weeping since he had told  her he was moving out--long shuddering inhalations, and then a gentle  high keening as her inheld breath came out. From the other bedroom he  could hear Theo shrieking, \"Bad! Bad!\" and Daisy's voice trying to  distract him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Sweetheart, it's okay. Cry, cry,\" he said. And then he said, \"Shhh.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThough he was still thinking of John, still trying to take it in, he  was also aware of thinking that it felt good, holding Emily. And of  wondering when he had last held her, her or Daisy. He couldn't  remember.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen she had calmed down a little, he stretched away from her to grab  the box of tissues from the stand by the bed. She blew loudly, using  several, and wiped her face. His shirt was wet where she had leaned  against him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"How did it happen?\" he asked at last, keeping his voice gentle. \"When?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe seemed stricken again at the question, her eyes swam and grew  larger, but she held on and whispered back, \"This afternoon. A car  just . . . hit him.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMark cleared his throat. \"He was driving?\"[quote]--The New York Times New York Times bestselling author of While I Was Gone","brand":"Ballantine Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301049389285,"sku":"NP9780345469595","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345469595.jpg?v=1767731825","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/lost-in-the-forest-isbn-9780345469595","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}