As our neighbors returned home from work, one by one, they heard her endless, keening howl coming from our yard. There’s been an accident.”Īpparently Lorelei was the one responsible for summoning the police. Iverson, this is Detective Anthony Stack. I was a bit thrown by the phrase “Ransome residence,” as well my last name is Iverson, and to hear a strange man refer to my house as if only Lexy lived there gave me the strange feeling that I’d somehow, in the course of a day, been written out of my own life’s script.
I scanned my mental catalog of male voices, friends and relatives who might possibly be at the house for one reason or another, but I couldn’t match any of them to the voice on the other end of the line.
I had an evening seminar to teach that night, and if I hadn’t called home to tell Lexy something interesting I’d read about a movie she’d been wanting to see, then I might have taught my class, gone out for my weekly beer with my graduate students, and spent a few last hours of normalcy, happily unaware that my yard was full of policemen kneeling in the dirt.Īs it was, though, I dialed my home number and a man answered the phone. I was in the university library when it happened, doing research for a paper I was working on for an upcoming symposium. None of them were working in their yards, enjoying the last of the warm weather, to see whether her body crumpled before she hit the ground, or whether she tried to right herself in the air, or whether she simply spread her arms open to the sky. There were no witnesses, save our dog, Lorelei it was a weekday afternoon, and none of our neighbors were at home, sitting in their kitchens with their windows open, to hear whether, in that brief midair moment, my wife cried out or gasped or made no sound at all. Here is what we know, those of us who can speak to tell a story: On the afternoon of October 24, my wife, Lexy Ransome, climbed to the top of the apple tree in our backyard and fell to her death. Quindlen and Parkhurst discuss the book on “Today.” Here's an excerpt: Parkhurst’s novel is the June selection for “Today’s Book Club,” as selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator and best-selling author Anna Quindlen. So begins “The Dogs of Babel,” by first-time author Carolyn Parkhurst.
Strange clues have been left behind: unique, personal messages that only she could have left and that he is determined to decipher. In the days that follow, Paul becomes certain that Lexy’s death was no accident. When his wife dies in a fall from a tree in their backyard, linguist Paul Iverson is wild with despair.
0 kommentar(er)
