Professor Steven Brookman is having an affair with his student/advisee Maud Stack and she dies. Not so simple! Maud is also a writer for the campus newspaper and writes an inflammatory article about abortions. This brings her into contact with Jo Carr, the campus counselor, who is a former nun who spent time in South America and has vivid memories of the violence she witnessed there. There is some question about whether someone read Maud's article and reacted in anger and had something to do with her death.
For such a short book, there are a lot of characters and a lot of bizarre associations. Maud's roommate is a successful actress who had an early unhappy marriage and now has a restraining order on her ex-husband. Her dad is a retired police officer (Catholic, of course) who has family ties with the "Irish mafia". Brookman's wife is Ellie Bezeidenhout, a Mennonite who hails from White Lake, Saskatchewan, and is also a professor at the college. It is a simple story but with lots of twists.
I was slightly put off by all the peculiar characters and their histories, but enjoyed the book in the end.
I was slightly put off by all the peculiar characters and their histories, but enjoyed the book in the end.
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