Dreams of Rescue: A Novel - Tapa blanda

The Daily News ...elegantly defies the basic tenets of damsel-in-distress fiction...But she isn't telling the same old story...

The New York Times Book Review ...agile prose that is an admirable vehicle both for internal anquish and hard-fought victories...

Library Journal Parallels between the pretense of acting and the reality of life run through the novel, giving it added dimension...

St.Louis Post-Dispatch Cunningham's deft descriptions make her characters jump off the page...

Winston Salem Journal an intensely gripping page-turner

Worcester Telegraph A darkly comic literary chiller.

The Woodstock Times This book is a real eye opener for anyone unfamiliar with the Family Court system...gives the novel depth and import.

Blue Stone Press ...delves into the ancient puzzle of men, women, love and violence with such perfect pitch.

Hudson Valley Magazine Compelling account of a woman who dreams of rescueówho must learn to be her own savior.

"I have spent the winter at my summer place," begins the narrator of this startlingly original literary chiller. Juliana Durrell Smythe, known for her "female in jeopardy" performances on film, fears her roles are proving prophetic. As an actress, she is accustomed to rescue. In movies, "Having known the comfort of muscled arms, I still expect, without reason, to be carried to safety and, ultimately, to be loved." But confined to her Victorian lake house, Juliana discovers the discrepancies between film and actual jeopardy. "The police have not turned out to be kindly, potential lovers...." She must walk the fault line of fiction and confront the mysterious and violent end of her marriage. An atmosphere of danger descends with the snow. The men who enter Juliana's life seem suspect; her predicament shadowed by the distress of her housecleaner. How much did she see? How much does she know? Haunted by her past roles and the history of her romantic home, built for a wedding in 1899, Juliana's marital mystery becomes entwined with that of the original Victorian bride's. To survive, she is compelled to connect a nineteenth-century disappearance to the contemporary despair of the lakeside resort. In a snowscape of dazzling beauty, Juliana must enact the role that will save or cost her own life. Plumbing the secrets of two centuries, Cunningham has written a hypnotic novel that will transport the reader into a brilliantly evoked world. With its hard-chiseled realities and incandescent images, Dreams of Rescue is a new take on a classic form, that shatters convention and will entrance readers long after its stunning finale.