How We Were Before
by Jonathan Kravetz
A novel of connected stories
July 23-26
When a savage home invasion results in the death of a town’s most glamorous couple, the surviving friends and relatives of the victims must navigate the emotional aftermath: Exasperated high school Vice-Principal Zachary Rivers makes a final effort to reach a troubled student. Town librarian, Shelby Blythe—the eldest daughter of the murder victims—begins a correspondence with Billy Lawson, her parents’ murderer. Evelyn Kavanaugh, a retired marketing manager and beloved family friend of the Blythes, embarks on a luxurious cruise as a prelude to suicide. Noam Russell, Billy Lawson’s best friend, returns to Benfield to claim a share of his deceased father’s estate. Samantha Blythe’s maternal attempt to help an employee evokes a renewed desire to connect with her own family. The spaces between stories are haunted by echoes of the deceased couple’s life—from the ignorant bliss of first impressions and great expectations to the tumultuous troubles of middle age, and, finally, an undying hope for reconciliation.
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A fascinating, potent examination of how a single violent act can spark endless repercussions.
Kirkus Reviews
Some readers of How We Were Before may enjoy the work as an inventive novel that plays with form while mining the emotions of characters at once unexpected and comfortingly familiar. Fiction that can achieve either one of these goals, let alone both, deserves to be relished. Yet How We Were Before is far more than just a spool of engaging yarns plaited into a magical arras. As both a gripping story and also a discerning exploration of the contemporary social landscape, Kravetz’s novel is a fine read for anyone who has ever explored New England’s country towns and rocky farmsteads from the safety of their local library—for all of us who have savored adventures in fields of heirloom corn and seas of steamers and scrod without leaving the hearths of our own imaginations.
Barrelhouse Reviews
About the Author
Jonathan Kravetz is an award-winning author whose work has appeared in journals such as Cardinal Sins, The Rappahannock Review, Narrative Northeast, The Opiate Magazine, All The Sins, The Furious Gazelle, and Wilderness House Literary Review. His plays have been produced in New York, Dallas, and in the UK, and he’ s twice been a Eugene O’ Neill Playwrights Conference semi-finalist. His plays have been published in the Exposition Review, The Iris Literary Journal, and other journals. He is the founder and former editor-in-chief of the literary webzine, Ducts.org.
