Until She Comes Home

Lori Roy has created a literary suspense novel about desperate housewives in a white working-class neighborhood in Detroit in 1957. The story has a tense, ominous feel as the homemakers react to forces affecting their community--closing factories, racial tensions, family secrets--and then face the disappearance of a mentally disabled young woman. Narrator Marguerite Gavin breathes life into the residents of Alder street, giving each a distinct voice and personality. She matches the tone of her narration to the emotional upheavals that are traumatizing the neighborhood. Depicting the characters' pain and feelings of helplessness, she provides verisimilitude to the people, place, and time period of this richly detailed story. D.L.G. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

April 15, 2013
Roy follows her Edgar-winning debut, Bent Road, with a moody, tension-filled tale of intertwined crimes set in late 1950s Detroit. The placid lives of Malina Herze, Julia Wagner, Grace Richardson, and the other women of Alder Avenue are upended, first by the murder of a “colored” woman near the factory where their husbands work, then by the disappearance of Elizabeth Symanski, a mentally challenged young adult who lives with her widowed father. While Malina, Julia, Grace, and the others discuss these disturbing events in their living rooms and kitchens, their menfolk search for Elizabeth. Julia’s nieces, Izzy and Arie, are told to remain indoors, but, in their boredom, the girls begin to explore the neighborhood and naturally find trouble. Under these pressures, problems old and new rise to the surface and lives are irrevocably changed. This well-written period piece may appeal more to readers of women’s fiction than mystery fans. Agent: Jenny Bent, the Bent Agency.

September 1, 2013

Roy follows her Edgar Award-winning novel Bent Road with another character-driven mystery set during the peak of the civil rights movement in 1968. A young black woman's murder barely causes a ripple among the white inhabitants of Detroit's Alder Road. But when Elizabeth, a young mentally disabled white woman, goes missing, the residents become concerned, then desperate. A massive manhunt involves all the neighborhood men; anyone who doesn't participate is suspect. While the men are searching for Elizabeth, the women remain at home, exposed to the same evil the men are trying to track. The story draws the listener in and doesn't let go until the conclusion. Marguerite Gavin does a splendid job of alternating among the various women's perspectives with distinctive clarity. VERDICT Recommended for those who enjoy mysteries created and compounded by the characters' culture. ["Roy's troubling novel leaves readers guessing until the end. It will appeal strongly to those fascinated by the psychological aspects of violent crimes and the motivations of those who commit them," read the review of the Dutton hc, LJ 4/15/13.--Ed.]--Deb West, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA

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