Season of Eclipse

by Terry Wolverton

Overview

After a chance encounter with terrorism at JFK leaves her snapping photos instead of fleeing, celebrated novelist Marielle finds herself thrust into the Witness Protection program—stripped of her vibrant life and identity.

With only her cat for company, Marielle plans her comeback with a sensational novel—until she discovers a fraudulent "posthumous" book bearing her name. Breaking cover, Marielle embarks on a perilous quest for truth, enlisting the aid of an eclectic crew including a young musician, Buddhist monks, and her stalwart ex-lover, Fresh.

Against all odds, Marielle is determined to reclaim her name and her life in this thrilling story of courage, identity, and resilience.

“With more twists and turns than a coiled snake, Season of Eclipse is also a deep examination of who we are and what happens to us when we can't be the person we thought we were. Both make this thriller hard to put down.” — J.M. Redmann, the Micky Knight mystery series

“Plucked out of her own life and plunged into witness-protection-program obscurity, Marielle Wing has the guts to activate her ire and her creative imagination to try to win back her name, all while discovering some rough truths about the life she left behind. She does this with the aid of one of the most deliciously irksome young women ever to appear on the page: Tuna, who might bring Marielle to new life if she doesn’t kill her first. Terry Wolverton’s Season of Eclipse is a fun and subversively serious novel about finding yourself while losing yourself, in spite of yourself.” –David Groff, author of Live in Suspense

“Terry Wolverton's Season of Eclipse is a wild ride of a thriller, with a protagonist who's as lovable as she is flawed. Marielle Wing witnesses a bombing and then is forced to go into hiding, with several ensuing changes of location and identity. Who is a friend and who is a foe? We don't know until the exciting conclusion. Rooting for them all the way, we follow Marielle and her cat Dude through a maze of danger and conspiracy. Don't begin reading this book in the evening unless you plan to stay up all night!” — Alice Bloch, Mother/Daughter Banquet

“A page turning thriller from award winning author Terry Wolverton. A terrorist event changes novelist Marielle’s life and outlook forever as she finds wisdom and help in unexpected places.” — Katherine Rupley, author, Antarctica

“Season of Eclipse is a thrill ride through the trust-no-one aftermath of a terrorist attack, and a meditation on the nature of self. Reading this novel is at once a shot of adrenaline and a deep, cleansing breath.” — Cheryl E. Klein, author, Crybaby: Infertility, Illness, and Other Things That Were Not the End of the World

“Who is Marielle Wing, and how does she stay ahead of an enemy that knows her every move and mistake? And as fragile relationships hang in the balance and close alliances shift, Marielle must test the limits of what she’s capable of to find the truth. This thrilling novel is one that you can't wait to find out what happens next, and yet, also want to read slowly and savor the delicious sentences. Will Marielle survive?” — Kathleen Brady, author, Language of Light

“Marielle Wing’s journey reminds us that in a world where the worst of humanity is perpetually on display, the best is just as possible. A single act of violence can send your life spinning out of control. Strangers may take you in and bind your wounds, help make you whole again.” — Bronwyn Mauldin, author, Love Songs of the Revolution

“Imagine everything about who you are is erased overnight? Your name, home, career, friends family – poof! Gone! This is exactly what happens to novelist and protagonist Marielle Wing after she witnesses a bombing at JFK airport and snaps a photo of one of the fleeing suspects. In short order, she is whisked by Homeland Security into Witness Protection against her will. Her obituary in the New York Times seals her fate. A suspenseful, moody, sharply layered story, Wolverton’s thrilling Season of Eclipse is also a meditation on identity and breathtaking transformation.” —Elise D’Haene, author, Licking Our Wounds

It’s the perfect thriller for readers who have a familiarity with the publishing industry, with plenty of familiar thriller tropes and coincidences recalibrated to fit the scale of a frustrated novelist’s life. It’s an offbeat premise, to be sure, and Wolverton manages to deliver across the board. A literary airport novel that flies its readers to unexpected destinations.—Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642475142
Publisher:	Bella Books
Publication date:	02/20/2024
Product dimensions:	5.38(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Season of Eclipse will mark the twelfth book Terry Wolverton has authored—fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. These include Embers, a novel in poems, Insurgent Muse: art and life at the Woman’s Building, a memoir; and Stealing Angel, a novel. Her most recent poetry collection is Ruin Porn.

Terry has edited fifteen literary compilations, including the Lambda Literary Award winning His: brilliant new fiction by gay men and Hers: brilliant new fiction by lesbians. Terry also collaborated with the late composer David Ornette Cherry to adapt Embers as a jazz opera.

She moved to Los Angeles in 1976 to join the Feminist Studio Workshop at the Woman’s Building, where she worked for thirteen years; she remains active on its Board of Directors.

Terry has received a COLA Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles, a Fellowship in Poetry from the California Arts Council, and the Judy Grahn Award from the Publishing Triangle, among other honors.

From 1988 through 1997, she taught multiple writing classes at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, including a workshop for people with HIV/AIDS. In 1997, she founded Writers At Work, a creative writing studio, where she continues to nurture creative talent. Since 2007, she has been Affiliate Faculty in the MFA Writing Program at Antioch UniversityLos Angeles. She also teaches part-time at Cal Arts.

Editorial Reviews

Acclaimed novelist Marielle Wing finds herself caught up in the hustle and bustle of JFK airport after an exhausting weekend spent at a PEN America event, ready to catch a flight home to Los Angeles—and her beloved cat, Dude. As she wanders through airport security, she’s swept into a nightmare when a terrorist bomb strikes. Instead of running, as others do, Marielle snaps pictures of the madness and men—one dressed as a police officer, who immediately takes her phone as “evidence” but neglects to leave her his name. A day later, when someone tries to kill Marielle via an explosion at her Los Angeles address, Homeland Security sweeps in to take over.

That’s just the beginning of Marielle’s troubles, as Homeland Security soon determines she’s in danger and whisks her into the Witness Security Program, altering her identity—and publishing her obituary in the New York Times. Utterly alone and unsure of what the future holds, Marielle starts to wonder who she can trust, including the government officials supposedly looking out for her best interests. Wolverton (Stealing Angel) skillfully crafts Marielle's downfall from a lovely life spent working on her latest novel to a woman at wit’s end with no one to turn to, a transformation that’s made all the more unreal when Marielle notices her publisher advertising her latest novel, posthumously of course—a novel Marielle is adamant she didn’t write. Readers will sympathize with Marielle as she’s whisked into what feels like a fiction novel—but ends up being her own life—and cheer her on in the hunt for the truth. When the lid finally blows off completely, Marielle is left to pick up the pieces, wondering if the real “Marielle Wing was [ever] coming back.” Ultimately, the experience, though terrifying, allows her to view life differently, “meet]ing] each day as the thing she had once dreaded, an empty page.”-booklife Reviews

From the Publisher

2024-01-04
A celebrated writer runs afoul of terrorists and federal agents in Wolverton’s psychological thriller.

Marielle Wing, a popular novelist, lives in Los Angeles, where her only major problem is finding the right woman to spend her life with. Her life changes drastically, however, after a trip to New York City places her in the middle of a terrorist attack at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Her quick thinking allows her to photograph the perpetrators as they flee the scene; afterward, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security determines that she’s in danger of retaliation and must enter witness protection—at least until the terrorists are apprehended. After her faked death, the author is relocated to suburban Detroit, with only her cat, Dude, as company. Here, she’ll be known as Lorraine Kaminsky until further notice. Marielle whiles away weeks of solitude, desperate to get her old life back, until she sees a book announcement that doesn’t make sense. It claims that her publisher will soon be releasing her final, posthumous novel, Memory’s Trail, which was “not even the title of the book I was working on,” she assures her DHS handler. “Whatever Knopf has or thinks they have, the book isn’t mine.” Before long, Marielle breaks out of her confinement to investigate who’s behind the announcement and why. Over the course of this novel, Wolverton’s stark prose effectively captures Marielle’s confusion and paranoia, which seems to stalk her at every moment: “She couldn’t help but stop for a moment to scan the street again, pivoting 360 degrees on the sidewalk….A white cat walked along a low wall. A dog barked in a backyard. A mail carrier lugged his bag from house to house….The quiet felt unimaginably dangerous.” It’s the perfect thriller for readers who have a familiarity with the publishing industry, with plenty of familiar thriller tropes and coincidences recalibrated to fit the scale of a frustrated novelist’s life. It’s an offbeat premise, to be sure, and Wolverton manages to deliver across the board.

A literary airport novel that flies its readers to unexpected destinations.

Kirkus Reviews