cover image The Locktender’s House

The Locktender’s House

Steven Sherrill, . . Random, $25.95 (254pp) ISBN 978-1-4000-6153-2

Janice Witherspoon finds her life upended after her boyfriend, referred to only as “Private Danks,” is killed in Iraq in this evocative, unsettling novel from Sherrill (Visits from the Drowned Girl ). Forced by Danks’s relatives to leave his Greensboro, N.C., apartment, she hits the road, at first imagining she’ll meet his body on its arrival back in the States. Realizing her mental state is breaking down as quickly as her car, she winds up in Pennsylvania, where she takes refuge in an abandoned house near a canal lock. After a while, she meets a rugged yet sensitive sculptor, Stephen Gainy, with whom she forms a sort of relationship; she encounters as well a strange woman whose voice, and perhaps more, attracts her in unexpected ways. A slow-building start pays off beautifully as the narrative progresses. As the reality of Janice’s inner and outer worlds—and the slippery border between—gradually becomes evident, the reader is drawn in even deeper and led to a satisfying close. (Apr.)