SEVEN LOCKS

Set in the Catskills on the eve of the Revolutionary War, SEVEN LOCKS is a spare, haunting, and beautifully written debut for readers who loved THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE.

In the years before the American Revolution, a woman's husband mysteriously disappears without a trace, abandoning her and her children on their farm at the foot of the Catskill Mountains. At first many believe that the farm wife, who has the reputation of being a scold, has driven her husband away. But as the strange circumstances of his disappearance circulate, a darker story begins to unfold, sending the lost man's wife on a desperate journey to find the means and self-reliance to ensure her family's survival.

Inspired by a famous American folktale, SEVEN LOCKS is an ambitious and poignant exploration of family love, secrets, and misunderstandings, and of the inner and outer lives of the American frontier at the end of the eighteenth century.

In this lyrical and complex book, which opens with a mystery and ends with a literary twist, Wade creates a rich, imaginative and tactile evocation of life and times in the historical Hudson River Valley, where the lines between myth and reality fade in the wilderness beyond the small towns, while an American nation struggles to emerge.

Christine Wade is a researcher with a focus on women's health care choices and global health traditions. She has worked in Shanghai, Kunming, Hong Kong, and Kuala Lumpur, as well as Verona, Bolgoan, and Rome. She lives by the Hudson River in New York City and in the Catskill Mountains. SEVEN LOCKS won a James Jones Fellowship Prize for an unpublished novel in 2009.