by Annalisa Crawford
I’ve read a number of books by Annalisa Crawford, and can’t get over how well she infuses her stories with wisps of haunting paranormal. ONE TUESDAY, EARLY is her best yet because it opens with such a creepy nightmare scenario, that of waking up only to find everyone is…gone.
That’s the case for Lexi. When she opens her eyes, she’s not in bed, but rather standing in the hall of her home. She’s dressed for work, but without her briefcase. Is she coming or going? Why doesn’t her partner, Finn, turn off the alarm clock in the bedroom?
From that appalling state of confusion, we move to chapter two, when Finn wakes in the same house to find Lexi…gone. The night before, they’d been drinking and had an argument, so maybe she’d been angry enough to finally leave him. Except there are no signs she packed. And no one has heard from her.
I absolutely loved this strange dreamscape of Lexi’s abandoned world juxtaposed against the peopled one where Finn lives, a man who must endure the personal pain of, and public scrutiny over, Lexi’s disappearance. The two move near one another, and at the same time are a world apart, which is perhaps the best metaphor for human relationships in which we think we know someone, but don’t really.
Bravo to this eerie mystery about the cataclysmic moment a human heart meets push comes to shove!
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THE FALCON, THE WOLF AND THE HUMMINGBIRDÂ a historical novel
BLISS ROAD, a memoir
WINTER LIGHT, a novel
THE WIND THIEF, a novel
GROWING GREAT CHARACTERS, a resource for writers