QuietusVivian Schilling
from Hannover House
On a stormy winter night a small plane bound for Boston goes down in the treacherous White Mountains of New Hampshire. Noted interior designer Kylie O’Rourke and her husband, Jack, are among the survivors. But it is just the beginning of the nightmare for Kylie. Through a haze of morphine, she awakens in the hospital to confused and harrowing memories of the crash. Though trapped within the wreckage, she recalls wandering the icy mountainside and speaking to one of the other passengers, only to find that he had died on impact. As the bizarre aftermath becomes sharper in her mind, it appears more ominous, along with the unshakeable feeling that she and the other survivors had somehow cheated death.
Reassured by her doctor that her disturbing memories had been induced by her sedation, Kylie returns to her life in Boston, but the aftermath of the tragedy proves unbearable. As her husband slips away from her into his own world of survivor‘s guilt and deceit, Kylie is seized by a growing paranoia that someone is stalking her every move. In her nightmares, the predator is a specter crossing over from the mountaintop to reclaim her. An old man eyes her in the subway, while a dark figure stalks her through Beacon Hill. Then a sudden and freakish tragedy sends Kylie's world toppling. While those around her fear she is losing her mind, she finds herself caught up in a chain of events she cannot escape.
In this deeply thought-provoking and chilling novel, Schilling questions the very nature of survival and death. She paints bold and unforgettable characters, while resurrecting disturbing and powerful apocrypha that has been all but buried under contemporary religious doctrine. With spellbinding intrigue, Quietus takes the reader to the brink of reason, to the edge where spiritual and physical meet, building with frenetic momentum to its shocking and haunting climax.
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