From School Library Journal
Quiet, studious Alice Wood is forced to face her past when filmmaker Hans Loomis approaches her about including her story in a documentary about cult leader Jack Wyck in the 1970s. Although Alice has sought obscurity after the events of that summer, which led to Wyck's imprisonment, it soon becomes clear that Alice will be outed either by the filmmaker or a group of Wyckians, who still admire Wyck despite his conviction. In her debut, Hahn intertwines Alice's experiences with free love and drugs and her search for enlightenment as a teenager with her desire to remain anonymous as an adult. The chapters alternate between 1979 and 1999, but Alice's stream-of-consciousness narrative sometimes blurs the line between past and present. This book demonstrates convincingly how an intelligent, well-liked, and respected high school student can suddenly find herself involved with a man on the fringes of society. Although teens need to navigate between two narrators and two different time periods, those who appreciate psychological thrillers will keep reading for answers. VERDICT A good choice where Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and Paula Hawkins's The Girl on the Train are popular.—Krystina Kelley, Belle Valley School, Belleville, IL
Review
"Tantalizing... carefully crafted." —Publishers Weekly
"A writer to watch for fans of sophisticated psychological suspense . . . Hahn maintains a fine balance between mystery and disclosure. The atmosphere throughout is tense and subtly creepy, and the folkloric elements are an interesting, original touch." —Kirkus
"The Singing Bone reads like the work of a seasoned novelist: rich, haunting, layered, beautifully written. It raises questions about the good and evil in all of us, the characters are complex, and the story's a page-turner—what more could a reader ask for?" —B. A. Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author of The Art Forger
"I stayed up all night reading The Singing Bone, and I kept on reading it on the airport bus. When I finished it, I was halfway across the ocean, and I wanted to stand up in the aisle and yell, this is a terrific book by a writer with talent to burn and the only thing wrong with it was that it wasn’t twice as long. Fans of the elegant, masterful, and downright chilling, watch this space for Beth Hahn." —Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean and Two if By Sea
"The debut spine-chiller from Beth Hahn, is a concoction of sophistication and surprise . . . riveting in detail and nuance." —Bookpage
About the Author
Beth Hahn studied art and writing at the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and earned an MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. She attended the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference and has been the recipient of a Ragdale Foundation residency. Beth’s short stories have appeared in Necessary Fiction, The Hawai'i Review, The South Carolina Review, and The Emrys Journal. She lives in New Castle, New York, with her husband, where she teaches yoga.
