The
Invisibles: A Novel
By:
Cecilia Galante
Releasing
August 4, 2015
William
Morrow
In
the vein of Meg Donohue and Jennifer Close, comes Cecilia Galante's
adult debut about the complicated and powerful bonds of female
friendship--a compelling, moving novel that is told in both the
present and the past.
Thrown
together by chance as teenagers at Turning Winds Home for Girls,
Nora, Ozzie, Monica, and Grace quickly bond over their troubled pasts
and form their own family which they dub The Invisibles. But when
tragedy strikes after graduation, Nora is left to deal with the
horrifying aftermath alone as the other three girls leave home and
don't look back.
Fourteen
years later, Nora is living a quiet, single life working in the local
library. She is content to focus on her collection of "first
lines" (her favorite opening lines from novels) and her dog,
Alice Walker, when out-of-the-blue Ozzie calls her on her
thirty-second birthday. But after all these years, Ozzie hasn't
called her to wish a happy birthday. Instead, she tells Nora that
Grace attempted suicide and is pleading for The Invisibles to convene
again. Nora is torn: she is thrilled at the thought of being in touch
with her friends, and yet she is hesitant at seeing these women after
such a long and silent period of time. Bolstered by her friends at
the library, Nora joins The Invisibles in Chicago for a reunion that
sets off an extraordinary chain of events that will change each of
their lives forever.
The
Invisibles is an unforgettable novel that asks the questions: How
much of our pasts define our present selves? And what does it take to
let go of some of our most painful wounds and move on?
Link
to Follow Tour:
http://www.tastybooktours.com/2015/06/the-invisibles-novel-by-cecilia-galante.html
Excerpt;
It wasn’t until she reached the
corner of Grove Street, where the sidewalk buckled and the pre-dawn
smells of yeast and fabric softener perfumed the air, that Nora
remembered it was her thirty-second birthday. She stopped abruptly,
as if someone had yanked a leash around her neck, and let the
information settle along her shoulders. Thirty-two. The number rolled
around in her head, and she waited for the onslaught of—what was it
exactly: relief? dread?—that was supposed to arrive at reaching the
end of another year, but it didn’t come. Instead, the first line
from a book she had once read occurred to her: “Once
upon a time,
there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the
wrong person.” Nora
could not remember the title of the book or even the name of the
author, but the words themselves, strung like so many lights in the
distance, felt as distressing now as they had the day she had first
come across them. Maybe even more so.
A band of sky behind the rooftops
ahead was turning a soft purple. The moon, a lopsided waxing gibbous,
was so translucent as to appear glass-like there in the heavens. It
would be another forty minutes or so before the sun rose, erasing all
traces of the moon for the day. Now, though, it was hers. The
September air was sharply cold, the imminent warning of a quickly
approaching fall, and the streets were littered with leaves browning
around the edges. Alice Walker, her chocolate brown retriever,
nuzzled the stiff grass for a few seconds and then turned around,
staring up at Nora. She barked once, and then again. It was unusual
for Nora to stop during their morning walks, a daily ritual that had
become so ingrained in their lives by this point that it was hard to
imagine anything preventing it. Even bad weather did little to deter
her; Nora made the trek in rain and snow, and once even in a
hailstorm, during which she’d had to stop and take refuge under an
enormous red-and- green-striped awning until things settled down
again. Walking cleared her head in a way few other things could, and
she never turned around until she reached the little grove of birch
trees by the railroad tracks, where she would sit for a moment and
rest before starting back again.
Alice Walker barked again, loudly,
the sound reverberating through the stillness, and then cocked her
head. The birch trees,
her eyes seemed to say. Let’s
get to the birch trees.
Nora looked away from the dog and stared down at her sneakers
instead—pale blue Asics with orange strips on each side. She
pressed two fingers beneath her breastbone and took a breath as if to
steady herself. A heaviness that was not disappointment or regret or
anything else she could identify yet filled her nonetheless. And for
the first time in as long as she could remember, she did not want to
keep walking toward the birch grove. She just wanted to go home.
“Come on, love,” she said,
turning around, tugging at Alice Walker’s leash. “Let’s go.”
The dog barked a third time,
obviously confused.
Nora’s feet moved with a mind of
their own, leading her back to the apartment they shared on Winslop
Avenue. “Yeah, well, I don’t know either,” she said. “Come
on, now.”
Author
Info
Cecilia
Galante is the author of several middle grade, young adult and adult
novels. She also teaches 8th grade English at Wyoming Seminary Prep
School, and teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Wilkes
University.
Excerpt;
She could hear the phone ringing in
her bedroom as she unlocked her front door. Alice Walker bolted
toward it, barking after each ring, as if the phone might respond.
Nora hung back, struggling to get her key out of the lock, which
still continued to stick, despite numerous complaints to the
landlord. She tugged again. Nothing. Well, she’d have to let the
machine get it. It was probably just Trudy or Marion from the library
anyway, calling to ask her to pick up some more coffee beans on her
way in. Between the three of them, the office coffeepot went through
at least four refills a day.
“Hey, this is Nora.” The
recorded sound of her voice echoed through the empty apartment. “I’m
not here, but I will be eventually, so please leave a message.”
Nora winced, listening. She’d gone through at least a dozen
messages when she’d set up the machine, trying her voice out each
time—a little happier here, more serious there—until she’d just
said to hell with it and settled on this one.
There was a pause and then:
“Norster?”
Nora’s
fingers froze around the rubber grip of the keys. No one had called
her Norster since she was seventeen years old. And even then, there
had been only one person who had ever used that name.
A throat cleared. Then: “Nora
Walker? Is this you? God, I hope I have the right number. This is . .
.” There was a muffled noise, as if the receiver had just been
covered, and then the faint, nearly obscured sound of a reprimand. “I
need a minute, Jack, okay? Mommy just needs one minute. Now, please.”
No. It couldn’t be. Nora gave the
key a final furious tug and then let go of it altogether, racing
toward her bedroom. It just couldn’t be.
“Sorry about that.” The voice
was back, unmuffled now and slightly raised. “Um, this is Ozzie
Randol. I’m just calling to—”
“Ozzie!” Nora snatched the phone
up so quickly that she almost dropped it. “Ozzie, I’m here!”
“Nora! Oh my God!”
“Ozzie.” Nora said the name a
third time, as if the word itself would settle her breathing somehow,
stop her legs from trembling. Her windbreaker, unzipped and loose,
hung open in front of her like a mouth agape. How long had she been
waiting for this moment? She couldn’t remember anymore. “Oh,
Ozzie. Oh my God. Is that really you?”
Ozzie laughed. “Of course it’s
really me. You know any other girls out there named Ozzie?”
“No.” A giggle emanated from
Nora’s mouth like a bubble. “No, I’ve never met another Ozzie.”
She sat down carefully on the end of her bed, smoothing the edge of
the white comforter with the palm of her hand. Ozzie had the same
laugh, a bright burst of sound that came out of a mouth so wide and
lips so full that Nora used to wonder how everything fit in there
together—and still looked so pretty.
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