Michelle Richmond

The Year of Fog

“A mesmerizing novel of loss and grief, hope and redemption, and the endurance of love.” Library Journal, starred review

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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.

NEW:Day 49: The Missing Final Chapter

“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)
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“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

The story behind the book: Emma Balfour walked into my life in the summer of 2003. Our paths collided on Ocean Beach, the 3-mile stretch of gray sand and graffiti-spattered seawall marking the western edge of the city… Publishers of The Year of Fog in translation: Random House Germany/Diana, Archipel(Netherlands), Tericum Kiado (Hungary), Videograf ii(Poland), AST (Russia), Editorial Presenca (Portugal), Buchet-Chastel (France), La Esfera De Los Libros (Spain), Musa Knyga (Lithuania), Kirpi Yayincilik (Turkey)

Remembering the Morning of September 11

This essay was originally published in a 7×7 Magazine tribute in September of 2001.

At 6:21 a.m., the telephone rings in the apartment I share with my husband in San Francisco’s Castro District. My mother, two time zones away in Mobile, Alabama, says, “Do you know?”

“Know what?”

“You better turn on the TV.”

The pictures do not register. Something is burning, something familiar. But it isn’t possible; surely the burning building isn’t what I think it is. Then the voice-over confirms, “The World Trade Center has been hit by a commercial aircraft.” Moments after the picture comes into focus, there is an explosion, a ball of fire, a gaping hole. Great confusion. The commentator, all his cool composure gone, says that a second plane has hit the South tower.

As I stand in front of the television, stunned, my husband hurriedly puts on a suit, as he does every morning. Today, there is more urgency. All hands on deck. He is on his way to work at the Federal Building. I remember a morning three years ago, in our apartment on 85th Street and Central Park West in New York City. On the television, footage of American embassies gutted in Kenya and Tanzania. That morning, I grieved for the hundreds of victims of a calculated mass murder that would turn out to be Osama Bin Laden’s handiwork. But then–still clinging to a stubborn sense of security that Americans tend to take as an inalienable right–I did not fear for our country. Today, I do.

The news is frustratingly sketchy. Four planes are missing. They are not all accounted for. They were bound for the West Coast.

I think of all the men and women who said good-bye to their spouses this morning before heading to work at the World Trade Center. Perhaps they had an argument. Perhaps they were too busy to share a quick kiss. Perhaps their children were still sleeping when they left home. I think of tourist families who argued about which site to take in first–the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, or the World Trade Center?

At the door, I hold on to my husband. A minute later, from the third-floor window of our apartment at 17th and Diamond, I watch him get into his car. Just as he pulls away, I shout down to him, “They’ve hit the Pentagon.”

I call our friend Pio, who live seven blocks from the World Trade Center. No answer. I call his office, but a recorded voice comes over the line: “All circuits are busy.” That eerily calm voice, recorded in better times, turns my blood cold.

My sister calls from Japan, crying. “What’s happening there?” she says. Japanese television is reporting eleven hijacked planes–which later turns out to be a misinterpretation of American Flight 11–but at the moment I am envisioning eleven planes full of panicked passengers, eleven unknown targets, a wide swath of disasters unfurling across the country.

Announcements begin rolling across the screen, beneath footage of the ravaged buildings, bodies falling, people running. The Transamerica building: closed. All U.S. domestic flights: grounded. All tunnels and bridges into New York City: closed. Government buildings across the country: closed.

I call my husband at the Federal Building. “It’s not safe,” I say.

“The place is swarming with security,” he assures me.

“There’s no security against a plane.”

In the foreground of the footage stands the Empire State Building, where I used to work. Once dwarfed by the World Trade Center, it suddenly looks immense, infallible against the backdrop of the two burning buildings. And then: the collapse. A descending mushroom of thick gray smoke. The cloud of dust billowing behind a crowd of running people. They are young and old. They are wearing suits, carrying briefcases, holding on to each other, stumbling. Their faces are every color and of every origin. Gradually they all take on the same gray-pink color, and in the footage they are wandering, dazed, flashes of white skin or black skin or brown skin showing through the ashen dust that covers them.

The Castro in San Francisco, Sept. 11, 2001

It is a gorgeous, sunny day in San Francisco. The sky is extraordinarily blue. The streets are strangely quiet. I wander up Castro Street, feeling as if I have stumbled into an unfamiliar city, a stage set of my neighborhood; the props are here, but most of the actors have gone home, and those who remain are barely speaking. Everyone looks struck by sorrow. In the air, an absence: not a single plane. The Coast Guard is patrolling San Francisco Bay. The borders with Mexico and Canada have been closed. Also closed: Disneyland. Mt. Rushmore. The Liberty Bell. Yankee Stadium.

My friend Pio calls. He’s okay. His office and apartment have been evacuated. He’s staying with a friend. In the background, a baby’s cry, the wail of sirens–sounds I’ve never associated with Pio, who wears about him an air of absolute calm. For the first time I remember, he sounds shaken, “The whole sky is gray,” he says. “The skyline looks so empty.”

At 2:00 in the afternoon, I realize that I have been watching television for seven and a half hours. I remember another television marathon in 1991, when then-President George Bush declared war against Iraq. My boyfriend at the time was in Saudi Arabia, and I skipped classes for a week to watch our first 24-hour television war. The war was swift. Victory seemed inevitable. The footage on TV was of square white buildings hit with such precision that the structures on either side of them remained intact–the common military memory of a psychologically pampered generation. Born in 1970, I was too young to feel the nausea of Vietnam or the terror of the Cold War in its worst moments. My generation came of age with Reagan-era egos, an unyielding faith in the promise of eternal riches, a belief in our ultimate safety and America’s invincibility.

Most of my American-born students at City College of San Francisco have only the vaguest memories of the Gulf War. Their war diet, until now, has come from Hollywood: larger-than-life American heroes battling enemies of every ilk–and always, in the end, victorious. But a few of my students came to America to flee war, emigrants from one of the many countries where war is a daily terror. One young woman told me that she endured a decade of civil war in El Salvador before leaving her family behind to pursue a more prosperous and secure life in America. “I had just begun to feel safe here,” she will tell me a few days after the attacks. “I don’t anymore.”

Today, children are interviewed at a school near what used to be the World Trade Center. Used to be–the phrase feels impossible on the tongue. Taking cues from the adults around them, the children are largely silent, looking around in disbelief, clinging to their backpacks. A freckled boy of seven says, “Some kids are worried because their parents worked at the World Trade Center.” Worked, past tense. The unintentionally accurate grammar of a child. As an adult, I can only imagine the images that will haunt these children in coming months, as they go about the daily business of school, soccer practice, slumber parties, bedtime.

Early on the morning of September 12, I awake in terror as a roar rips through the silence. My first thought: a plane. No planes should be flying yet. I rush to the window, shaking off the numbness of sleep, and realize that it was only a motorcycle.

View a photo gallery of Bay Area victims of the September 11 attacks here.

Family members and friends of many of those who died on September 11 set up foundations and scholarships to honor their loved ones. Here are links to some of the foundations honoring victims with Bay Area ties:

Brent Woodall Foundation for Exceptional Kids

Captain Jason Dahl Scholarship Fund

Tom Burnett Foundation

Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas Foundation

Patrick J. Quigley IV Memorial Scholarship

Wanda Green Scholarship
Betty Ong Foundation

Melissa Harrington Hughes Memorial Fund

Nicole Miller Scholarship Fund

Naomi Solomon Memorial Fund

The Art of Rejection: Kathryn Stockett’s tale of never giving up

More Magazine features an essay by Kathryn Stockett, author of the wildly successful novel The Help, now a wildly successful film. It’s an old story, but worth repeating: novelist gets a zillion rejections, or 60, to be more precise, before finally landing an agent, a publisher, and a long-running spot at the top of just about every bestseller list you can imagine.

Stockett’s advice for writers and anyone else who keeps hitting a brick wall? “Give in to your obsession.”

Click here to get free downloads from the Guided Workbooks for Writers series.

In the end, I received 60 rejections for The Help. But letter number 61 was the one that accepted me. After my five years of writing and three and a half years of rejection, an agent named Susan Ramer took pity on me. What if I had given up at 15? Or 40? Or even 60? Three weeks later, Susan sold The Help to Amy Einhorn Books.

For Stockett, 61 was the magic number. With The Year of Fog, my magic number wasn’t far behind. I like to believe that every good book has a magic number, that books will find their way into the hands of a receptive agent and editor given enough time and persistence. For me, the agent was Valerie Borchardt, and the editor was Caitlin Alexander, and I consider my book very fortunate to have fallen into their hands.

So if you have a book that keeps coming back with a form letter that says, “Unfortunately, this book is not quite right for us,” don’t give up. Envision in your mind a magic number. You don’t know it yet. No one does. It could be twenty rejections from now, or forty. Or it could be just one.

Related: What if the only thing standing between you and publication is a great revision? Visit the Book Doctor now.

What writers can learn from late, great music man John Carter

In July’s obit section, WORD magazine remembers John Carter, songwriter, producer, and A&R man extraordinaire, who “was instrumental in the careers of and a passionate supporter of Bob Seger, The Motels, Sammy Hagar, Melissa Etheridge, Tori Amos, David and David, and … Tina Turner.”

WORD quotes an interview for industry website Taxi, in which Carter said that “the one thing he had learned was that over 70 percent of hit records have titles containing nouns.”

All kinds of songs become successful, and therefore can be held up as examples to encourage someone that what they’re doing is right, but I think, in general, it’s an English lesson. Lyrics are important It’s about a story. It’s about a great title. The title should have a big noun in it. Some of the best songs are even proper nouns. Nouns, baby, nouns!”

If you think about it, the same principle applies to good writing of any kind. One, “it’s about a story.” And two, it’s specific: proper nouns are nothing if not specific. It’s the very old, very true creative writing 101 lesson: you get to the universal by way of the personal. You reach many by focusing on the struggle of one. It’s easy to find great books with a proper noun in the title:

Ulysses
Lolita
Portnoy’s Complaint
The Great Gatsby
Jane Eyre
Madame Bovary

Okay, you get the picture. Of course, this is not to say it has to be a proper noun. I can think of equally exciting books that have only improper nouns (I don’t think that’s a thing, really, but I like the sound of it) in the title.

To Kill a Mockingbird
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Bluest Eye
Things Fall Apart (what can be less specific than things?)
Brave New World

You’ll note, however, that all of the books in the latter category get very specific very quickly, with characters whose personal and unique struggles have a universal quality. Scout moves us not because she’s archetypal, but because she is a very specific child at a very specific time and place, engaged in a universal struggle played out in the tragedy of one man and one town.