Strange but True (47 page)

—Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of
Lucia, Lucia
and
The Queen of the Big Time

“
Strange but True
will have you on the edge of your seat.”

— Redbook

“In
Strange but True
, the mysteries are domestic, the characters from families blown apart by events that change lives in instants… The reader is let inside their houses, far-flung neighbors in the country town of Radnor, Pennsylvania. You are in their basements, inside their thoughts, then out on the highway, driving by, wondering what goes on inside. Searles addresses the reader throughout, reminding us that he's the writer: ‘You know what's coming next, but you don't know all of it.' This is the reason we keep reading.”

— San Francisco Chronicle

“Exquisitely odd yet instantly recognizable, as strange but true as the hidden life of one's next-door neighbor. The novel moves in unexpected directions throughout… Its steady gravitational pull—readers should expect to stay up late for this one—testifies to the solidity of its bedrock impressions, cast by an author with extraordinary powers of observation… Yet while readers will enjoy traveling to the heart of the mystery, what they'll cherish most in this accomplished novel are its startling real characters… all perfectly crafted. Searles's novel should find a wide and grateful readership.”

— Publishers Weekly

“As in his bestselling debut,
Boy Still Missing
, Searles studies how the impact of a single, sudden event can radiate outward, cruelly accruing all sorts of other badness in its spread… He wisely doesn't make promises he can't keep, and they may not be for everyone. That they one day may, though, shimmer in the stealthy beauty of this novel.”

—
New York Daily News

“[A] suspenseful read that explores the intensity of the mother/son bond.”

— MORE

“This energetic and witty read is reminiscent of the potboiler plot that drove Searles's debut novel… Searles gives us an examination of the faces of grief, in particular the grief of women…
Strange but True
shifts adroitly between various points of view… the plot rocks, but the grief is in the details, from Melissa's disinclination to fix the facial scars she acquired during the car crash that killed her beloved, to Charlene's unwillingness to let go of her rabid sadness.”

—
Newsday
(New York)

“Intrigue on the main line… Hilarious… [A] shocking psychological suspense… A journey filled with twists and surprises.”

—
Main Line Times

“You can see why the author, John Searles, hit [it on with]
Strange but True
for the title of this weird and wonderful follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut. Combining the best elements of a suspense novel with the emotional heft of a complex family drama, it's that rarest of literary treats: a brainy beach book. Dig in.”

—
Elle

“Everyone in
Strange but True
is scarred in some way… Besides rage and sorrow, Searles tells us, these characters are about to experience real danger. This heavy darkness is one of the many reasons to read this wonderfully entertaining novel at the beach.”

—
Esquire

“Searles is a remarkably incisive writer with a unique ability to key into erstwhile tragedies and recognizable characters without caricature… [Philip] Chase has his eyes opened to the potential of redemption through a bittersweet twist of fate. A series of wittily drawn supporting characters and a list of neatly remarkable sideshow circumstances and red herrings, coupled with Searles's leaps in time and tone, make
True
quite strange indeed; a luminously eerie novel.”

—
Philadelphia City Paper

“With his deep respect for the mysteries of everyday life, John Searles has achieved a masterpiece of mood, malice, and visionary love. So ardently did this story have me in its clutches, that I still feel shaken by its beauty.”

— Laurie Fox, author of
The Lost Girls

Boy Still Missing

Grateful acknowledgment is made to reprint the following:

Last stanza from “A Curse Against Elegies,” from
All My Pretty Ones
by Anne Sexton. Copyright © 1962 by Anne Sexton, renewed 1990 by Linda G. Sexton. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from “Suicide Note,” from
Live or Die
by Anne Sexton. Copyright © 1966 by Anne Sexton, renewed 1994 by Linda G. Sexton. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from
Charlotte's Web
by E. B. White. Copyright © 1952 by E. B. White, renewed © 1980 by E. B. White. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.

STRANGE BUT TRUE.
Copyright © 2004 by John Searles. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:

Searles, John.

Strange but true / John Searles. — 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-688-17571-6 (alk. paper)

I. Title.

PS3569.E1788S73 2004

813'.6—dc22

2004044980

ISBN-10: 0-06-072179-0 (pbk.)

ISBN-13: 9780060721794 (pbk.)

EPub Edition © DECEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780062191076

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RRD
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About the Author

2
Meet John Searles

4
Excerpts from Searles's Diary Scrolled on Paper Napkins

About the Book

6
Behind the Pages

9
Fact or Fiction?

Read on

13
Have You Read?

J
OHN
S
EARLES
is the deputy editor of
Cosmopolitan
, where he oversees all book coverage for the magazine. His essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
, and other national newspapers and magazines. He lives in New York City.

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

J
OHN
S
EARLES
was born and raised in Monroe, Connecticut, the son of a truck-driver father and stay-at-home mom. After his high school graduation, his parents used their connections to get him a job at the nearby Dupont factory, where he gathered parts for various job orders. It didn't take him long to realize the place wasn't for him—three hours into the first day, he pretended to be sick and left, though when his parents found out, they sent him right back.

After that, John set his sights on becoming the first person in his family to attend college. To save money for tuition, he stayed on at the factory and worked a night-job as a telemarketer, keeping people on the phone for hours asking important questions like, “On a scale of one to ten, how do you rate Bubble Yum in terms of its chewability?”

When he finally saved enough money, John quit the factory and began commuting to Southern Connecticut State University. He majored in business, because he thought it was practical, but minored in creative writing, because it was something he loved. Although he barely got by in economics and calculus, he was fortunate to win a number of writing awards from the university. Encouraged by this recognition, he moved to New York City to pursue a master's degree in creative writing at New York University. While there, he was twice awarded a major fiction prize for his short stories and also began writing a novel entitled,
Stone in the Airfield
.

Following his time at NYU, John waited tables and attempted to publish his novel. His most memorable rejection came when an editor mistakenly left this note in with the manuscript: “I could barely make it to page 60 and I feel really sorry for anyone who has to read the whole thing.” Soon afterward, John attended a writer's conference in South Carolina, where he met the fiction editor of
Redbook
. She liked his writing and offered him a freelance job reading short story submissions for fifty cents a story. It wasn't much, but he preferred reading to serving Caesar salads and nachos, so he took that job for over a year until he was offered a part-time position in the books department at
Cosmopolitan
. John planned to give
Cosmo
a try for a few weeks then quit if it got in the way of his fiction writing. Many years later, he is still at the magazine, now as the deputy editor, overseeing all book excerpts and reviews.

Along the way, John began writing
Boy Still Missing
after the first sentence came to him while cleaning under his bed. In 2001, the book was published and went onto become a national bestseller. Hailed as “riveting” by the
New York Times
and “hypnotic” by
Entertainment Weekly
, the novel inspired
Time
magazine to name him a “Person to Watch,” and the
New York Daily News
to name him a “New Yorker to Watch.” His second novel,
Strange but True
, also a national bestseller, was praised as “sinister and complex” by Janet Maslin of the
New York Times
and “extraordinary” by
Publishers Weekly
. Both novels have been optioned for film. John can be seen frequently on shows like
Weekend Today
, CBS's
Early Show
, ABC's
Live! with Regis & Kelly
, and CNN, where he appears to discuss his favorite book selections.

“An editor mistakenly left this note in with the manuscript: ‘I could barely make it to page 60 and I feel really sorry for anyone who has to read the whole thing.'”

As I
MENTIONED
in these pages, I waited tables for many years while putting myself through college and graduate school, then while I was first trying to get published. Whenever I needed to escape during my shift, I hid in the bathroom where I kept a diary of sorts on paper napkins. I had forgotten these napkin diaries until I moved a few years ago, and discovered hundreds in a box beneath my bed. I'm sharing three of these entries here.

“She said, ‘You deal with them. I'm afraid I might pull out a gum'”