Michelle Richmond is the New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author of The Marriage Pact, Golden State, The Year of Fog, No One You Know, Dream of the Blue Room, Hum, and The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress. Her books have been published in 30 languages. A native of Alabama, she makes her home in Northern California and Paris.
Under the tree on Christmas morning, a swell stash of books that my personal Santa picked up from Green Apple Books on Clement Street in San Francisco
The Jokers, by Albert Cossery I know nothing about this book, which is precisely why I love Green Apple: Santa will always find something he didn’t know he was looking for.
A House with No Roof, by Rebecca Wilson A memoir by the daughter of labor leader Dow Wilson, who was murdered when the author was 3. Wilson writes about growing up with and later caring for a loving but mercurial mother, in the shadow of Rebecca’s violent and much older brother, Lee, in Bolinas, California. With an introduction by Anne Lamott. I’m not sure why, but I read this book in one day. It is a coming of age tale that focuses not on the murder itself but rather on the repercussions of the father’s death on the individual members of the author’s family.
The Ice Princess, by Camilla Lackberg. A few years ago, my husband bought me The Man on the Balcony, a Martin Beck mystery from the crime writing husband and wife team Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. I’d never read crime thrillers before, and my husband thought some easy reading might be relaxing. Well, I was hooked, and I quickly made my way through all of the Martin Beck mysteries. At the time, I thought of them as a guilty pleasure, but I’ve since dropped the “guilty” part and have come to consider a good thriller to be simply a great pleasure, guilt-free. Now, for every birthday, anniversary, and Christmas, along with a couple of novels in translation by writers I’ve never heard of , my husband gives me a crime thriller, and it’s usually the first in the stack to get read. Good writing is good writing, no matter the genre.
The last great crime thriller I read, by the way, was The Boy in the Suitcase, by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis. I’ve also become partial to the Icelandic writer Arnaldur Indridason, who has created a wonderful character in Inspector Erlandur Sveinsson.
The Year of the Hare, by Arto Paasilinna I haven’t started this one yet, but any book that the wonderful travel writer Pico Ayer wants to “live in” piques my curiosity.
If you go in for an element of surprise, join the Green Apple Book Club, whereby you receive a new book i in the mail each month, handpicked by the excellent Green Apple Guys, Pete & Kevin.
Make the most of National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo)! Story Starters, A Workbook for Writers will banish writer’s block, spark your imagination, and provide endless opportunities to make fiction out of thin air. Whether you want to punch up your dialogue, explore dramatic tension, mine your life for material, or write a compelling opening chapter, this workbook is the perfect companion for Nanowrimo and beyond.
Arranged in a daily progression to help you get the most out of your writing practice, the 50 exercises in this workbook are the result of more than a decade of teaching creative writing and literature. Craft-based exercises, free-flow exercises, and ten-minute prompts lead up to a series of flash fiction assignments. Includes roomy pages for writing, as well as quotes on literary craft.
HERE IS the truth, this is what I know: we were walking on Ocean Beach, hand in hand. It was a summer morning, cold, July in San Francisco. The fog lay white and dense over the sand and ocean–an enveloping mist so thick I could see only a few feet in front of me.
Emma was searching for sand dollars. Sometimes they wash up by the dozens, whole and dazzling white, but that day the beach was littered with broken halves and quarters. Emma was disappointed. She is a child who prefers things in a state of perfection: sand dollars must be complete, schoolbooks must be pristine, her father’s hair must be neatly trimmed, falling just above his collar.
I was thinking of her father’s hair, the soft dark fringe where it touches his neck, when Emma tugged at my hand. “Hurry,” she said.
“What’s the rush?”
“The waves might wash them away.”
Despite our bad luck so far, Emma believed that on the beach ahead lay a treasure of perfect sand dollars.
“Want to go to Louis’s Diner instead?” I said. “I’m hungry.”
“I’m not.”
She tried to extract her fingers and pull away. I often thought, though I never said it, that her father spoiled her. I understood why: she was a child without a mother, and he was trying to compensate.
“Let me go,” she said, twisting her hand in my own, surprisingly strong.
I leaned down and looked into her face. Her green eyes stared back at me, resolute. I knew I was the adult. I was bigger, stronger, more clever. But I also knew that in a test of will, Emma would outlast me every time. “Will you stay close by?”
“Yes.” She smiled, knowing she had won.
“Find me a pretty sand dollar.”
“I’ll find you the biggest,” she said, stretching her arms wide.
She skipped ahead, that small, six-year-old mystery, that brilliant feminine replica of her father. She was humming some song that had been on the radio minutes earlier. Watching her, I felt a surge of joy and fear. In three months, I would marry her father. We hadn’t yet explained to her that I would be moving in permanently. That I would make her breakfast, take her to school, and attend her ballet recitals, the way her mother used to do. No, the way her mother should have done.
“You’re good for Emma,” Jake liked to say. “You’ll be a much better mother than my ex-wife ever was.”
And I thought, every time, how do you know? What makes you so sure? I watched Emma with her yellow bucket, her blue cloth shoes, her black ponytail whipping in the wind as she raced away from me, and wondered, how can I do it? How can I become a mother to this girl?
I lifted the Holga to my eye, aware as the shutter clicked–once, softly, like a toy–that Emma would be reduced to a blurry 6´6 in black and white. She was moving too fast, the light was insufficient. I turned the winding knob, clicked, advanced again. By the time I pressed the shutter release a final time, she was nearly gone.
Chapter Two HERE THEN is the error, my moment of greatest failure. If everyone has a decision she would give anything to retract, this is mine: A shape in the sand caught my eye. At first it looked like something discarded–a child’s shirt, perhaps, or a tiny blanket. By instinct I brought the camera to my eye, because this is what I do–I take pictures for a living, I record the things I see. As I moved closer, the furry head came into focus, the arched back, black spots on white fur. The small form was dusted with sand, its head pointing in my direction, its flippers resting delicately at its sides.
I knelt beside the seal pup, reaching out to touch it, but something stopped me. The wet black eyes, open and staring, did not blink. Spiky whiskers fanned out from the face, and three long lashes above each eye moved with the breeze. Then I saw the gash along its belly, mostly hidden by sand, and felt some maternal urge bumping around inside me. How long did I spend with the seal pup–thirty seconds? A minute? More?
A tiny sand crab scuttled over the sand by my toe. The sight of it reminded me of those miniature creatures that littered the beach at Gulf Shores when I was a child. My sister Annabel would capture them in mason jars and marvel at their pink underbellies as they tried to climb out, legs ticking against the glass. This crab kicked up a pocket of sand, then disappeared; at most, another ten seconds passed.
I glanced eastward toward the park, where the fog abruptly ended, butting up against startling blue. As a transplant to this city from the bright and sultry South, I had come to love the fog, its dramatic presence, the way it deadens sound. The way it simply stops, rather than fading, opaque whiteness suddenly giving way to clarity. Crossing from fog into sunlight, one has the feeling of having emerged. Traveling in the other direction is like sinking into a mysterious, fairy-tale abyss.
Just beyond the beach, along the Great Highway, a hearse led a line of cars south toward Pacifica. I remembered the last funeral I attended, a healthy guy in his late twenties who broke his neck in a rock-climbing accident; he was a friend of a friend, not someone I knew well, but because I’d talked with him at a dinner party two weeks before the accident, it seemed appropriate to go to the funeral. This recollection took another five seconds.
I looked ahead, where Emma should be, but did not see her. I began walking. Everything was saturated a cool white, and distance was impossible to measure. I clutched the plastic Holga, imagining the great images I’d get, the deep black of Emma’s hair against the cold white beach.
I couldn’t help thinking of the dead seal pup, how I would explain it to Emma. I believed this was something mothers instinctively knew how to do. This would be a test, the first of many; at that moment I was not thinking entirely of Emma. I walked faster, anxious to know if she had seen the seal; it was a good thing for her to see that day, alone on the beach with me. I wanted her to be frightened by the dead seal pup so I could step delicately into the role of stepmother.
I don’t know exactly when I realized something was wrong. I kept walking and did not see her. I pushed my hands in front of me, aware even as I did so of the absurdity of the gesture, as if a pair of hands could part the fog.
“Emma!” I called.
The panic did not strike immediately. No, that would take several seconds, a full minute almost. At first it was only a gradual slipping, a sense of vertigo, like the feeling I used to get as a child when I would stand knee-deep in the warm water of the Gulf of Mexico, close my eyes against the white-hot Alabama sun, and let the waves erode the platform under my feet. First the sand beneath the arches would go, then the toes, and finally I would lose my balance and tumble forward into the surf, mouth filling with seawater, eyes snapping open to meet the bright spinning world.
“Emma!”
I yelled louder, feeling the shifting, unreliable sand beneath my feet. I ran forward, then back, retracing my steps. She’s hiding, I thought. She must be hiding. A few yards from the dead seal pup stood a concrete drainage wall covered with graffiti. I ran toward the wall. In my mind I pictured her crouched there, giggling, the pail propped on her knees. This vision was so clear, had such the ring of truth, I almost believed I had seen it. But when I reached the wall, she wasn’t there. I leaned against it, felt my insides convulse, and vomited into the sand.
From where I stood, I could make out the shape of the public restrooms down the beach. Racing toward them, I felt a sense of dread. I knew, already, that the search had somehow shifted. I crossed the two-lane-highway and checked the women’s room, which was dark and empty. Then I circled around to the men’s side. The windows were made of frosted glass, dim light spilling onto the tile floor. I plunged my hand into the trash bin, looking for her clothes, her shoes. I got down on hands and knees and looked behind the urinals, holding my breath against the stench. Nothing.
As I crossed back to the beach, I was shaking. My fingers felt numb, my throat dry. I climbed to the top of a sand dune and turned in circles, seeing nothing but the impenetrable white fog, hearing nothing but the soft hum of cars along the Great Highway. For a moment I stood still. “Think,” I said out loud. “Don’t panic.”
Up ahead, more fog, a half mile or so of beach, then the hill leading to the Cliff House, the Camera Obscura, the ruins of the Sutro Baths, Louis’s Diner. To the right, there was the long sidewalk, the highway, and beyond it, Golden Gate Park. Behind me, miles of beach. To my left, the Pacific Ocean, gray and frothing. I stood at the center of a fog-bound maze with invisible walls and infinite possibilities. I thought: a child disappears on a beach. Where does that child go?
ABOUT THE BOOK: Six-year-old Emma vanished into the thick San Francisco mist. Or into the heaving Pacific. Or somewhere just beyond: to a parking lot, a stranger’s van, or a road with traffic flashing by. Devastated by guilt, haunted by her fears about becoming a stepmother, Abby refuses to believe that Emma is dead. And so she searches her mind for clues about what happened that morning and cannot stop the flood of memories reaching from her own childhood to illuminate that irreversible moment on the beach.
Now, as the days drag into weeks, as the police lose interest and fliers fade on telephone poles, Emma’s father finds solace in his faith, but Abby can only wander the beaches and city streets, attempting to recover the life and the little girl that she lost. With her hope fading and her life at a crossroads, she will leave San Francisco for a country thousands of miles away. And it is there, by the side of another sea, on a journey that has taken her into a strange subculture of wanderers and surfers, that Abby will make the most astounding discovery of all, as the truth of Emma’s disappearance unravels with stunning force. Sample instantly on Nook or other e-readers.
“Richmond gracefully explores the nature of memory and perception in key passages that never slow the suspense of the search…a page-turner with a philosophical bent.” Booklist
“What happened to six-year-old Emma? The answer, and its implications, will keep you on the edge of your chair.” Seattle Times
“The book of the summer…If you read only one book, read The Year of Fog.” Olivia de Lamberterie, Tele Matin, Ch 2, France. “A breathtaking novel…magnetic.” Elle France. “The gripping story of the search for a missing child.” Radio France. One of the “great successes of the summer.”Le Figaro, France “Intimate and exciting…a good, long, fascinating metaphysical novel.” Benzine Magazine, France
“An unusually imaginative novel of family, loss and hope, The Year of Fog tackles mysteries of time, memory and the human heart.” ~South China Morning Post
“Heartbreaking and riveting, this novel is beautifully written” ~Closer Magazine, UK. “Mesmerising and harrowing… Richmond has established herself as the mistress of the kind of literary mystery that reads like a fine thriller but with added insight and wisdom.” ~Daily Mail “Impossible to put down…five stars.” ~News of the World
“A harrowing, beautifully written story. What happened to six-year-old Emma? The answer, and its implications, will keep you on the edge of your chair.” Seattle Times“Deeply moving.” ~Madame Magazine, Germany. “Psychologically sophisticated suspense.” ~Freundin, Germany. “I’ve never found it so difficult not to race to the last page.” Brigitte Magazine, Germany. “Shines with a pleasing literary style, a quiet narrative and intense characters.” WDR5, Germany “Richmond masterfully conjures feelings of love and loss.” Paisajes, Spain. “Intriguing.” Que Leer, Spain. “With sensitivity, Michelle Richmond examines the fragility of our own stories and the role of memory.” Lalibre, Belgium
“In this spare page-turner, Richmond draws complex tensions from the setup of a child gone missing… The book is beautifully paced – one feels Abby’s clarity of purpose from the first page. The sure-handed denouement reflects the focus and restraint that Richmond brings to bear throughout.” Publishers Weekly
Grade: A. “Gripping…Richmond makes the reader feel the gamut of emotions, from the initial disbelief and blind hope to the nagging guilt and gnawing despair.” ~Alexis Burling,The Washington Post
“What marks us, and how do we react to our impressions, both large and small, of life? These are the questions asked by San Francisco author Michelle Richmond in her wonderful second novel, “The Year of the Fog. Despite all its drama — and this heart-wrenching tale does ratchet up the tension — this is primarily a story of echoes and repercussions…spare, moving…it’s all done delicately, in almost poetic terms.” Clea Simon, The San Francisco Chronicle (read the review here) GBS_insertEmbeddedViewer(‘ISBN:9780385340113?,600,500); // ]]>
“Richmond’s second novel is a startlingly original take on every parent’s worst nightmare…An unsettling and powerful punch of a book, The Year of Fog unfolds as a waking dream about the persistence of memory and the extraordinary force of love.” Cookie Magazine
“A good part of what makes “The Year of Fog” compulsively readable is the voice of its narrator. Abby’s tone is quietly conversational, almost as though she is sitting across the table and, over a cup of coffee, calmly telling her tale. The dispassionate tone reveals a brutally honest teller, and only serves to heighten the tension of the story…both believable and bittersweet.” Robin Vidimos, The Denver Post
“A harrowing, beautifully written story of a photographer and soon-to-be stepmom whose momentary lapse in attention results in the disappearance of her fiance’s little girl on a foggy beach in San Francisco. What happened to 6-year-old Emma? The answer, and its implications, will keep you on the edge of your beach chair.” Melinda Bargreen, Seattle Times.
“[The Year of Fog] manages to have both the high-velocity pace of a ripped-from-the-headlines thriller and nuanced insights into the nature of memory, love, family, and guilt…Richmond burros into the details of San Francisco’s geogaphy and neighborhoods…Like all good mysteries, The Year of Fog twists the reader’s expectations, turning some of what we think we know about missing child cases on its head and providing a surprising and satisfying ending that manages to retain the complexity of real life. It is, in the end, a very memorable book.” ~Samantha Berry, Marin Magazine
“Much more than a tale of a woman looking for a child who’s lost. It’s also about the nature of passion, guilt, and most of all, memory…The Year of Fog also serves as a real-life guidebook of sorts to some of San Francisco’s lesser known neighborhoods and sites…Richmond captures the spirit of life in The City.” ~Leslie Katz, The San Francisco Examiner
“A hauntingly written novel of two people dealing with loss in their own ways… Richmond’s dream-like prose lends to an eerie atmosphere, and the solving [of] the mystery of Emma’s disappearance will leave you breathless.” Parkersburg News & Sentinel
“A child’s disappearance is at the heart of this riveting read that follows photographer, fiance and soon-to-be-stepmother Abby Mason. Once the drama starts, prepare to race to the last page.” Hallmark Magazine
“Grab your beach bag and call your book club, The Year of Fog probably will be the best new novel of the summer…vivid environmental descriptions and psychologically sound character development. As with all good novels that border on great literature, the plot is multilayered. The Year of Fog will leave the reader both perplexed and enlightened.” Reba McMellon, The Mississippi Press
“A book I just finished this morning – reading while I was making breakfast because I absolutely could not put it down- is The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond. Every single word in this book was worth reading.” Tina Ristau, Des Moines Register
“Richmond artfully combines Abby’s research on memory and a sensitive depiction of her relationship with fiance Jake, resulting in a compelling, smart novel that you truly will find difficult to put down.” Birmingham Magazine
“While The Year of Fog is structured around the search for Emma, it offers a deeper meditation on the fragility of love. Which is the stronger loyalty, to child or lover? How can we relieve someone else’s despair? These sometimes unanswerable questions form the heart of Richmond’s book…The Year of Fog works well as both a literary mystery and a poignant portrait of a family ripped apart by random circumstance.” Frances Dinkelspiel, Culture Vulture
“The Year of Fog [is] written so movingly that an experience that is far from universal becomes immediate and personal… the vignettes throughout create a larger poetica in which it is the reader who becomes, happily, lost.” Santa Fe Reporter
“The dilemma with Michelle Richmond’s newest novel is this: the plot is so compelling you can’t read fast enough, but the writing is so crisp and exact you want to savor every word…Nothing is sugar-coated in these pages, which makes Abby’s self-realizations all the more honest, satisfying, and true. ” Anita Garner, Alabama Writers’ Forum
“Beautifully written, with deep insights into the human soul.” Willow Glen Books, San Jose, CA
“In The Year of Fog, Richmond gives us both a mystery and a meditation on memory. Profound, deeply moving, endlessly gripping; you will devour it in a weekend and turn it over to begin again.” ~Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli
“From the very first chapter The Year of Fog grabbed me by the throat and didn’t let go. Michelle Richmond is that marvelous thing, a writer who can craft a gorgeous sentence and also create a plot so propulsive that it hurts to put the book down, even for a minute. And forget about sleeping. You won’t do that until you’re finished.” ~Ayelet Waldman, author of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits
“Michelle Richmond’s The Year of Fog is a harrowing and unputdownable novel. A moving account of one woman’s ardous journey from an ordinary day to nightmare to, ultimately, redemption. Few novelists put their characters through harder paces than Richmond. And readers have no choice but to carried away by the enduring beauty of this story.” ~Peter Orner, author of The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo & Esther Stories
“Suspenseful, richly imagined, and ultimately hopeful, The Year of Fog is a keeper. Michelle Richmond is a talent to watch.” ~Joshilyn Jackson, author of Gods in Alabama and Between, Georgia
“Michelle Richmond crafts an addictive, haunting story, filled with brainy tidbits and a local’s love of landscape.” ~Michelle Tea, author of Valencia, Rent Girl, Rose of No Man’s Land
“The Year of Fog is impossible to stop reading. Even as I savored Michelle Richmond’s rich prose and fascinating passages on photography and the nature of memory, I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. A missing child, a haunting neighborhood, a search for love, The Year of Fog has it all. Make a sandwich now: you won’t stop reading for hours.”~Amanda Eyre Ward, author of How to Be Lost and Sleep Toward Heaven
“In The Year of Fog, Michelle Richmond has performed something of a magic act. From the first few pages I was hooked. As though she knows the ride she is is taking us on is harrowing, Richmond peppers the story with mischievous humor and unexpected insights, all layered over a gorgeous love letter to San Francisco.” ~Heather Juergensen, co-writer, actor, Kissing Jessica Stein
“Michelle Richmond gives us a fascinating look into the mind of an artist. Richmond’s prose is sensual, her images fresh, her writing, lyrical and lovely.” ~Ann Cummins, author of Red Ant House and Yellowcake
