Along Comes a Stranger: A Novel

Along Comes a Stranger: A Novel

by Dorie McCullough Lawson
Along Comes a Stranger: A Novel

Along Comes a Stranger: A Novel

by Dorie McCullough Lawson

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Overview

The summer of 1995 marks Kate Colter's fifteenth year in the small town of Hayden, Wyoming. A New Englander at heart, Kate loves her husband and daughter and is fond of her neighbors. Yet, privately, she feels disconnected from the people around her. Then along comes Tom Baxter. Her mother-in-law's new suitor from "back East," Tom immediately draws Kate in with his gentle charm and engaging conversation, like a little piece of the home she so misses. But inconsistencies in his stories are piquing Kate's curiosity—and a series of peculiar and suspicious events is leading her to a terrifying conclusion that could forever shatter her life and the lives of those she loves.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780060884772
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 06/03/2008
Pages: 272
Product dimensions: 5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Dorie McCullough Lawson is the author of Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children. The daughter of renowned historian David McCullough, she lives in Rockport, Maine, with her husband, the artist T. Allen Lawson, and their four children. This is her first novel.

Read an Excerpt

Along Comes a Stranger

Chapter One

Bear Creek Road
Hayden, Wyoming
1996

"You never really know about people," I remember my father saying when I was a little girl. And he was right. You don't. You never really know.

What happened to me and to my family a year ago, during a few weeks of the summer of 1995, was something I never expected. Who could have expected? It seems as unlikely now as it did then. I'm trying to write it all down, then maybe I'll be able to see what's important, what matters to me, and what doesn't. Maybe then I'll be able to explain it to Clara someday in a way that makes sense.

I once knew a boy named Jake who watched his best friend die. The two teenage boys were swinging from a rope into a lake. The friend let go before he was over the water, landed on a rock, and bled to death. All the bleeding was internal, so neither boy knew how serious the injury was. The point is that Jake was there when his best friend died. He was part of the death, and that's one of life's big experiences, one that most of us never have. With my aunt Joanie afterward, I said, "This will change Jake forever."

Without missing a beat, Joanie, who sees to the heart of things quickly, said, "And if it doesn't, he's an idiot!" Well, I'm not going to be an idiot.

I'm forty-one years old and I grew up in the East. My name is Kate Colter, Kathleen Louise Vaile Colter. George Colter is my husband, and our daughter, Clara, is about to turn seven. We've wished for more children, but it just hasn't happened. George is a paleontologist. He teaches at the community college and does fieldwork all over Wyoming. His specialty is theEocene epoch, and he spends a lot of time in the southwestern corner of Wyoming at Fossil Butte. When people ask what I do, I say, "I'm at home with Clara," but I do have a part-time job; I just keep it quiet because I can tell my boss, Mr. Stanley, prefers it that way. Mr. Stanley is a well-to-do, elderly gentleman who keeps to himself, and I pay his bills and do the payroll for his Rafter T Ranch. As a sideline, I'm available if you have a horse (or a dog, or a sheep...no cows) that needs something extra...a wound needing regular bandaging, medication, and a clean stall, anything really. For this people usually pay me with money, but not always. Barter is alive and well here, and I've traded for almost everything from dental work, to fly-fishing equipment, to a year's worth of oil changes. I wish someone would trade for plane tickets or books, but that hasn't happened, either.

We live in Hayden, Wyoming, George's hometown, in a state so full of fossils it's a suitable home base for paleontological fieldwork. George and I met in New York City fifteen years ago while he was working at the Museum of Natural History and I was visiting a friend in Connecticut during my awkward, confused time right after college. We sat next to each other on the train and started talking. The day had turned from beautiful to cold and raw and I had no coat, and George, the Westerner and gentleman that he is, had a jacket to loan me. The next day I returned it to him at the museum, and the rest, as they say, is history. When he asked me to marry him, I knew I was saying yes to him, and yes to Wyoming. Like so many women, I'm here because of a man. There are girls who came with their families to dude ranches from places like St. Louis and Pittsburgh, fell in love with cowboys, and stayed; women who met their husbands back east at college and then came west with them; and gals who were here visiting for one reason or another, met the right guy, and just couldn't leave. With hardly any effort I can list women from eighty-nine years old on down who stay here for a man, but I can't think of a single man who's here for a woman.

My mother-in-law, Lorraine, lives in Hayden, too, and I'm lucky because I like her. She doesn't really know me, she just thinks I'm George's "nice wife from back east," and that's about it. It used to drive me crazy, but now I'm used to it. George is still bothered, but what can I do? George's father died years ago of kidney failure, and ever since, Lorraine has been the receptionist at Mountain Vision Ophthalmology. Lorraine knows what's going on in town and she doesn't care much about anything outside of town, unless, of course, it's on TV or in her Country Woman magazine. She's small and pretty, with fine features. Her skin is so even that it must have hardly seen the sun, and at sixty-four, her legs look better than mine. Anyway, it's important to mention her now because all that happened last summer began with her.

Before I get into the events of a year ago, I should explain my frame of mind at the time. Summer had come on strong, as it always does. So, so hot, and dry. It was the middle of July, midmorning, and I remember stepping out of the overly air-conditioned Albertsons grocery store. Pushing my cart to the truck, I could hardly see in front of me because it was so bright. The heat was too much already, hitting me from the sun above and the pavement below. At the far end of the parking lot there were more RVs than usual, probably because Rodeo was about to begin. Clara followed closely behind talking mostly to herself. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with a thought, a feeling really...Is this it? Is this all it's going to be? . . .

Along Comes a Stranger. Copyright © by Dorie Lawson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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