Channeling
the emotional
intensity of
Susan Minot and
Amy Bloom—and
infused with a
witty,
dream-like
surrealism
reminiscent of
Margaret
Atwood—this
mesmerizing
debut takes us
inside the
unsettling world
of Margaret
Lydia Benning,
which turns
upside down when
she falls in
love…and then
unravels before
our eyes.
“What I
have to tell Ben
is just this. At
last I am
certain. All the
signs, all the
dreams are in.
And I know now I
have made a
terrible
mistake. I was
wrong, it turns
out, about us.”
Margaret
Lydia Benning
lives adrift in
the same Midwest
town where she
went to college.
By day, she
works at a
low-level job
for the Project,
a
university-sponsored
educational
publisher housed
in a former
sanatorium.
There she shares
the fourth floor
with a squadron
of eccentric
editors and a
resident ghost
from the
screamers’ wing.
At night,
Margaret returns
to her small
house on Mott
Street, resigned
to the
disturbing
overtures of her
strange
neighbor, Mrs.
Eberline.
Emotionally
sleepwalking
through the days
is no way to
lead a life. But
then Margaret
meets Ben Adams,
a visiting
professor of art
at the
university.
Despite the
odds—and their
best
intentions—Margaret
and her
professor become
lovers, and she
glimpses a
future she had
never before
imagined. For
the first time,
she has
hope…until Ben
inexplicably
vanishes. In the
wake of his
disappearance,
Margaret sets
out to find him.
Her journey will
force her to
question
everything she
believes to be
true.
Told
through
intertwined
perspectives, by
turns
incandescent and
haunting,
Some Other
Town is
an unforgettable
tale, with a
heart-breaking
twist, of one
woman’s
awakening to her
own
possibility—and
her ability to
love, and love
well.
