An Unclean Place: A Novel

by Barbara Barrow

Overview

Dawn and her best friend Amber are students at Stillwater School, an experimental academy that’s the laughingstock of Atlanta. When Ms. Ella arrives to teach the eighth grade, she shakes up the school with her radical ideas and violent discipline, building an enthusiastic following and even winning the loyalty of rebellious Dawn. 

The imprint she leaves on her students is both profound and damaging, long after scandal shuts down the school and leads to Ms. Ella’s arrest. Dawn pursues a destructive path into Ms. Ella’s family, while Amber embraces a solitary, bookish life. Years later, after Dawn’s mysterious death, Amber sets off to find her estranged former teacher. In the process, she uncovers a shocking story of narcissism, art, betrayal, and murder.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781941360736
Publisher:	Lanternfish Press
Publication date:	05/16/2023
Pages:	308
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Barbara Barrow is the author of The Quelling (Lanternfish Press, 2018), which was selected as a Gold Winner for Literary Fiction in the Foreword Reviews Book Awards. Her short stories have appeared in Faultline, Southern Humanities Review, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere, and her scholarship has been published in Ecocene, Victoriographies, Victorian Poetry, and other academic journals. Originally from Atlanta, she has lived in New York, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and now Lund, Sweden, where she teaches literature and writing and lives with her husband, daughter, and pets.

Editorial Reviews

"A simmering, sinister backyard thriller.”—Melanie Finn, author of The Hare and The Gloaming 

"A worthy cousin to Donna Tartt's The Secret History."—Jen Michalski, author of You'll Be Fine and The Company of Strangers 

“A tantalizing and disturbing contemporary noir world.”—Alicia J. Rouverol, Dry River and “I Was Content and Not Content’’: The Story of Linda Lord and the Closing of Penobscot Poultry

From the Publisher

"In crisp, riveting prose, Barbara Barrow explores the fluid boundaries between love and obsession. An Unclean Place is a simmering, sinister backyard thriller: trust shape-shifts into malevolence, those most familiar to us become monsters—and reflect back to us how easy, how quick the descent.”

author of The Hare and The Gloaming Melanie Finn

"With confident prose and vivid characterization, Barrow unravels a world of secrets that turn fascination to obsession, love to dread. A worthy cousin to Donna Tartt's The Secret History, An Unclean Place affirms that monsters hide in the most ordinary places, people."

author of You'll Be Fine and The Company of Stran Jen Michalski