The Vanishing Point »

MARY SHARRATT is an American writer who has lived in the Pendle region of Lancashire, England, for the past seven years. The author of the critically acclaimed novels Summit Avenue, The Real Minerva, and The Vanishing Point, Sharratt is also the coeditor of the subversive fiction anthology Bitch Lit, a celebration of female antiheroes, strong women who break all the rules.

In the tradition of Philippa Gregory’s smart, transporting fiction comes this tale of dark suspense, love, and betrayal, featuring two star-crossed sisters, one lost and the other searching.

Bright and inquisitive, Hannah Powers was raised by a father who treated her as if she were his son. While her beautiful and reckless sister, May, pushes the limits of propriety in their small English town, Hannah harbors her own secret: their father has given her an education forbidden to women. But Hannah’s secret serves her well when she journeys to colonial Maryland to reunite with May, who has been married off to a distant cousin after her sexual misadventures ruined her marriage prospects in England.

As Hannah searches for May, who has disappeared, she finds herself falling in love with her brother-in-law. Alone in a wild, uncultivated land where the old rules no longer apply, Hannah is freed from the constraints of the society that judged both her and May as dangerous—too smart, too fearless, and too hungry for life. But Hannah is also plagued by doubt, as her quest for answers to May’s fate grows ever more disturbing and tangled.

MARY SHARRATT’s first novel, Summit Avenue, was a Book Sense selection. She has taught at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and has given workshops around the country on the subject of women and fairy tales. She lives in Lancashire, England.

Library Journal

When beautiful, promiscuous May leaves 17th-century England to marry an unknown distant cousin in the New World, her plain but brilliant sister, Hannah, is heartbroken, but vows to follow her sister to America someday. In the meantime, Hannah cares for their physician father, who secretly passes his knowledge of medicine on to her. Letters are exchanged between the sisters at the rate of only one or two a year, telling much of May's new life but remaining oddly silent about her new husband, Gabriel. When the girls' father dies, Hannah leaves England intending to reunite with her sister. On arriving in America, however, she does not find May, but Gabriel, with whom she falls in love. Hannah and Gabriel attempt to carve a new, happier life for themselves until Hannah can no longer ignore her doubts about Gabriel's part in May's disappearance. This extremely compelling, well-researched, and intensely written tale by Sharratt (The Real Minerva) is packed with fascinating historical information. Its only fault is that the narrative switches perspectives between characters, which in itself would be fine, except that the events are related out of sequence. This is not only somewhat confusing but also unnecessary, but despite this drawback the book is recommended for public libraries. Wendy Bethel, Upper Arlington P.L., OH Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.