The Widow Nash: A Novel - Hardcover
Winner of the 2017 Reading the West Award
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
"What keeps you reading is not just the quality of the writing, which is just absolutely wonderful, but also to find out: Is [Dulcy] going to [remake herself]? Can this be successful? Or is she going to be found out?" ―Nancy Pearl, Morning Edition, NPR
Dulcy Remfrey has traveled the globe with her eccentric father, Walton, a wealthy entrepreneur obsessed with earthquakes and catastrophe, searching to cure his long battle with syphilis through any crackpot means necessary. Their deep connection is tested, however, when Walton returns from an African expedition without any of the proceeds from the sale of his gold mine. It seems he's lost his mind along with the great sum of money, his health declining rapidly. Her father's business partner (and her ex-fiancé) insists Dulcy come to Seattle to decipher her father's cryptic notebooks―a dozen in all, wrapped in brightly colored silk―which may hold clues to the missing funds. Yet when her father dies before they can locate the money, Dulcy falls under suspicion. Petrified of being forced to spend the rest of her life with her ex-love, Dulcy decides to disappear from the train bringing her father's body home.
Is it possible to disappear from your old life and create another? Dulcy travels the West reading stories about her presumed death and settles into a small Montana town where she is reborn as Mrs. Nash, a wealthy young widow with no burden of family. But her old life won't let go so easily, and soon her ex-fiancé is on her trail, threatening the new life she is so eager to create.
The Widow Nash is a riveting narrative, filled with a colorful cast of characters, rich historical details, and epic set pieces. Europe in summer. New York in fall. Africa in winter. The lively, unforgettable town of Livingston, Montana. And in Dulcy, Jamie Harrison has created an indelible heroine sure to capture the hearts of readers everywhere.
"This gorgeously written historical novel follows Dulcy, a young woman in 1904 who attempts to flee her late father's business problems―and her violent ex-fiance's grasp―by traveling west and posing as a wealthy widow." ―Entertainment Weekly
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
"What keeps you reading is not just the quality of the writing, which is just absolutely wonderful, but also to find out: Is [Dulcy] going to [remake herself]? Can this be successful? Or is she going to be found out?" ―Nancy Pearl, Morning Edition, NPR
Dulcy Remfrey has traveled the globe with her eccentric father, Walton, a wealthy entrepreneur obsessed with earthquakes and catastrophe, searching to cure his long battle with syphilis through any crackpot means necessary. Their deep connection is tested, however, when Walton returns from an African expedition without any of the proceeds from the sale of his gold mine. It seems he's lost his mind along with the great sum of money, his health declining rapidly. Her father's business partner (and her ex-fiancé) insists Dulcy come to Seattle to decipher her father's cryptic notebooks―a dozen in all, wrapped in brightly colored silk―which may hold clues to the missing funds. Yet when her father dies before they can locate the money, Dulcy falls under suspicion. Petrified of being forced to spend the rest of her life with her ex-love, Dulcy decides to disappear from the train bringing her father's body home.
Is it possible to disappear from your old life and create another? Dulcy travels the West reading stories about her presumed death and settles into a small Montana town where she is reborn as Mrs. Nash, a wealthy young widow with no burden of family. But her old life won't let go so easily, and soon her ex-fiancé is on her trail, threatening the new life she is so eager to create.
The Widow Nash is a riveting narrative, filled with a colorful cast of characters, rich historical details, and epic set pieces. Europe in summer. New York in fall. Africa in winter. The lively, unforgettable town of Livingston, Montana. And in Dulcy, Jamie Harrison has created an indelible heroine sure to capture the hearts of readers everywhere.
"This gorgeously written historical novel follows Dulcy, a young woman in 1904 who attempts to flee her late father's business problems―and her violent ex-fiance's grasp―by traveling west and posing as a wealthy widow." ―Entertainment Weekly
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Jamie Harrison has lived in Montana with her family for almost thirty years. She has worked as a caterer, writer, and as a technical editor for archaeological, botanical, and biological reports. She is the daughter of Jim Harrison.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
CHAPTER 1 ALMOST ALL SOULS' DAY
People paid attention when they arrived because Carrie was beautiful and Dulcy had jilted a rich man. Dulcy hadn't been to the city since, and once she had a glass in her hand, she found she enjoyed the spiky, expectant whispers, the open curiosity. They wore black dresses and masks, because they were in mourning for Martha, but most of the other women were pretending to be Marie Antoinette or Cinderella, and the dust from their powdered hair dropped like dandruff. Dulcy studied the men, skimming over the earnest costumes―kings and knights―for odder types like headhunters, sheiks, and Vikings, but as she often did, she found she liked the idea of people more than the reality. An insurance man at her elbow put aside his bullfighter's cape and cap and began talking about oysters― their different shapes, their increasing rarity―and for a little while his obsession, his sliver of strangeness, was interesting. But he didn't bear long study; he dissolved like a bad mint.
"I met your father once, at my club," he said. "A genius, but such a character. A little all over the place. I gather you are always in the process of traveling."
The insurance man came from a good family, with bundles of money, but his eyes were evasive, and she could see him work through his memory, try to suss out stories of the lost engagement. As he thought, he pursed his lips and moved them in and out.
All around them, Carrie's friends were playing divination games, courtship games: people were supposed to drip candle wax in finger bowls, blow out lines of candles and count the years they'd stay unwed, throw peels over a shoulder and guess what letter they formed, and bob for apples. There was no one in this room Dulcy felt like bobbing for, and probably no one who wanted to bob for her, but she allowed herself to be herded toward a dangling, tarnished hand mirror, to look behind her reflection for the man she would marry. For Carrie, who'd left a trail of peels every Halloween since she was three, the man in the mirror was peachfaced, hovering Alfred Lorrimer, who seemed to expand with wine and her attention that night, not so much opening like a flower as swelling like a sponge.
Dulcy stood obediently in line and opened her eyes on cue: she saw her face and a black curtain, and felt a train move below them, not a sound but a shudder. "Of course it was black," Carrie hissed in her ear, pointing to the drapery that faced the mirror. "I want you to have fun. Can't you just do that for a bit?"
A line of handsome, placid-faced men in silly costumes, waiting to be picked, found this amusing. "All right," said Dulcy, finishing a second glass. "How do you say yes in Halloween?" "As if it were a language?" asked one man. "As if it were a language," she said. The whole strange city vibrating around her, and here she was in a puddle of normal. "We give up," they said. "Oui," she said. "And ja." "Hohoho," said the bullfighter. And: "Let me fetch another glass for you." When he headed off, as Dulcy slid toward the door, she could hear Carrie pipe away: her sister had spent years with their difficult father, months at the farm in Westfield helping their dying grandmother, but she was so happy to see people again, happy to be social. In the front hall, Dulcy put her finger to her lips when she asked a maid for her coat.
Outside, she walked away from the line of waiting hansoms, heading south down Fifth Avenue and Broadway. The champagne had done wonderful things for her brain, now that she was alone. In Madison Square she stopped at a cart for a cheesy Greek pastry and skipped on, giddy, wiping oily fingers on a churchyard's brick wall. Past the half-lit triangle of the Fuller Building, she turned east at the Rivoli Hotel and waved to the doorman, who was loading a collection of large people into a carriage. A moment later, she heard footsteps and turned to find the doorman hurrying up behind her. "A telephone call," he said. "We just sent someone to the apartment to find you."
In the Rivoli lobby the German at the front desk pointed to the telephone, and she tried to think through her panic as she reached for the receiver. If someone was dead, a telegram arrived. Telephones meant someone was still dying―an aunt upstate in Westfield―and there was a point to haste.
But it was Henning Falk, calling from Seattle, and Dulcy's champagne mood evaporated while the operator finished introductions. "Walton's dead," she blurted out. "His ship went down. You're calling to say he's drowned."
The man at the desk flinched.
"No, no," said Henning. "I met your father this morning at the docks. But things are missing."
She hadn't spoken to Henning in almost three years, and never before on the telephone, but he sounded so much like himself― perhaps the voice was a little tighter, maybe there was less of a Swedish lilt at the end of each sentence―it took her a moment to find a new way to worry. "Missing. Documents?"
"Well, yes, those too, but the money," said Henning. "We need your help; you need to come."
Dulcy's face was hot from alcohol and her bolt through the city, and she wiped a last flake of pastry crust from her coat. Jabbering people floated around the lobby, and a little man who looked like death was sneezing ten feet away, each seizure driving him deeper into the soft upholstery of an armchair. This "we" meant Victor Maslingen, her father's business partner and her former fiancé: a royal summons. "You know that's not possible. I'm sure Walton's simply spent it."
"Nobody could spend that much. Your father is not well."
"Not well in what way?" There were so many possibilities.
"He's lost his mind," said Henning. "What little remained. He is having problems with his memory, problems with logic. He is balmy. Barmy."
"Put him on the train. I can meet him halfway and take him home."
"No, Dulce. He's weak and he's feverish and he unbuttoned in the cab and fiddled himself. And it's all of the money, entirely, every drop gone. Victor is very upset."
Every drop, fiddled. She felt Henning pick his way around a second language and an audience. At least six people in the hotel lobby could hear her end of the conversation; only the operator, who kept clearing his throat, could hear Henning's. She wondered if Henning was standing in Victor's library, if some of the static crackle was Victor, holding his breath, actually worried enough to have Henning beg her to come to Seattle.
"I don't want Victor near me. I don't want to have to talk to him or see him every day."
"He won't touch you," said Henning. "He doesn't want to see you, either. Please, Dulcy." Everything pleasant was over, again. A door slammed a continent away, Victor leaving the room.
People paid attention when they arrived because Carrie was beautiful and Dulcy had jilted a rich man. Dulcy hadn't been to the city since, and once she had a glass in her hand, she found she enjoyed the spiky, expectant whispers, the open curiosity. They wore black dresses and masks, because they were in mourning for Martha, but most of the other women were pretending to be Marie Antoinette or Cinderella, and the dust from their powdered hair dropped like dandruff. Dulcy studied the men, skimming over the earnest costumes―kings and knights―for odder types like headhunters, sheiks, and Vikings, but as she often did, she found she liked the idea of people more than the reality. An insurance man at her elbow put aside his bullfighter's cape and cap and began talking about oysters― their different shapes, their increasing rarity―and for a little while his obsession, his sliver of strangeness, was interesting. But he didn't bear long study; he dissolved like a bad mint.
"I met your father once, at my club," he said. "A genius, but such a character. A little all over the place. I gather you are always in the process of traveling."
The insurance man came from a good family, with bundles of money, but his eyes were evasive, and she could see him work through his memory, try to suss out stories of the lost engagement. As he thought, he pursed his lips and moved them in and out.
All around them, Carrie's friends were playing divination games, courtship games: people were supposed to drip candle wax in finger bowls, blow out lines of candles and count the years they'd stay unwed, throw peels over a shoulder and guess what letter they formed, and bob for apples. There was no one in this room Dulcy felt like bobbing for, and probably no one who wanted to bob for her, but she allowed herself to be herded toward a dangling, tarnished hand mirror, to look behind her reflection for the man she would marry. For Carrie, who'd left a trail of peels every Halloween since she was three, the man in the mirror was peachfaced, hovering Alfred Lorrimer, who seemed to expand with wine and her attention that night, not so much opening like a flower as swelling like a sponge.
Dulcy stood obediently in line and opened her eyes on cue: she saw her face and a black curtain, and felt a train move below them, not a sound but a shudder. "Of course it was black," Carrie hissed in her ear, pointing to the drapery that faced the mirror. "I want you to have fun. Can't you just do that for a bit?"
A line of handsome, placid-faced men in silly costumes, waiting to be picked, found this amusing. "All right," said Dulcy, finishing a second glass. "How do you say yes in Halloween?" "As if it were a language?" asked one man. "As if it were a language," she said. The whole strange city vibrating around her, and here she was in a puddle of normal. "We give up," they said. "Oui," she said. "And ja." "Hohoho," said the bullfighter. And: "Let me fetch another glass for you." When he headed off, as Dulcy slid toward the door, she could hear Carrie pipe away: her sister had spent years with their difficult father, months at the farm in Westfield helping their dying grandmother, but she was so happy to see people again, happy to be social. In the front hall, Dulcy put her finger to her lips when she asked a maid for her coat.
Outside, she walked away from the line of waiting hansoms, heading south down Fifth Avenue and Broadway. The champagne had done wonderful things for her brain, now that she was alone. In Madison Square she stopped at a cart for a cheesy Greek pastry and skipped on, giddy, wiping oily fingers on a churchyard's brick wall. Past the half-lit triangle of the Fuller Building, she turned east at the Rivoli Hotel and waved to the doorman, who was loading a collection of large people into a carriage. A moment later, she heard footsteps and turned to find the doorman hurrying up behind her. "A telephone call," he said. "We just sent someone to the apartment to find you."
In the Rivoli lobby the German at the front desk pointed to the telephone, and she tried to think through her panic as she reached for the receiver. If someone was dead, a telegram arrived. Telephones meant someone was still dying―an aunt upstate in Westfield―and there was a point to haste.
But it was Henning Falk, calling from Seattle, and Dulcy's champagne mood evaporated while the operator finished introductions. "Walton's dead," she blurted out. "His ship went down. You're calling to say he's drowned."
The man at the desk flinched.
"No, no," said Henning. "I met your father this morning at the docks. But things are missing."
She hadn't spoken to Henning in almost three years, and never before on the telephone, but he sounded so much like himself― perhaps the voice was a little tighter, maybe there was less of a Swedish lilt at the end of each sentence―it took her a moment to find a new way to worry. "Missing. Documents?"
"Well, yes, those too, but the money," said Henning. "We need your help; you need to come."
Dulcy's face was hot from alcohol and her bolt through the city, and she wiped a last flake of pastry crust from her coat. Jabbering people floated around the lobby, and a little man who looked like death was sneezing ten feet away, each seizure driving him deeper into the soft upholstery of an armchair. This "we" meant Victor Maslingen, her father's business partner and her former fiancé: a royal summons. "You know that's not possible. I'm sure Walton's simply spent it."
"Nobody could spend that much. Your father is not well."
"Not well in what way?" There were so many possibilities.
"He's lost his mind," said Henning. "What little remained. He is having problems with his memory, problems with logic. He is balmy. Barmy."
"Put him on the train. I can meet him halfway and take him home."
"No, Dulce. He's weak and he's feverish and he unbuttoned in the cab and fiddled himself. And it's all of the money, entirely, every drop gone. Victor is very upset."
Every drop, fiddled. She felt Henning pick his way around a second language and an audience. At least six people in the hotel lobby could hear her end of the conversation; only the operator, who kept clearing his throat, could hear Henning's. She wondered if Henning was standing in Victor's library, if some of the static crackle was Victor, holding his breath, actually worried enough to have Henning beg her to come to Seattle.
"I don't want Victor near me. I don't want to have to talk to him or see him every day."
"He won't touch you," said Henning. "He doesn't want to see you, either. Please, Dulcy." Everything pleasant was over, again. A door slammed a continent away, Victor leaving the room.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherCounterpoint
- Publication date2017
- ISBN 10 1619029286
- ISBN 13 9781619029286
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages352
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. It is New York, 1904, and Dulcy Remfrey, despite an idiosyncratic, traveling childhood, faces the predictable life of a woman of the time. All that changes when her eccentric father returns from his expedition to Africa without any of the proceeds from the sale of a gold mine. It seems he?s lost his mind along with the money, and Dulcy?s obsessive ex-fiancé (and her father?s business partner) insists she come to Seattle to decipher her father?s cryptic notebooks, which may hold clues to the missing funds. When her father dies unexpectedly, taking the truth with him, Dulcy looks at her future, finds it unbearable, and somewhere in the northern Rockies disappears from the train bringing her father?s body home. Is it possible to disappear from your old life and create another? Dulcy travels the West reading stories about her own death and finds a small Montana town where she?s reborn as Mrs. Nash, a wealthy young widow, free from the burden of family. But her old life won?t let go so easily, and soon her ex-fiancé is on her trail, threatening the new life she is so eager to create. The Widow Nash is a riveting narrative, filled with a colorful cast of characters, timeless themes, and great set pieces. Europe in summer. New York in fall. Africa in winter. And the lively, unforgettable town of Livingston, Montana. This is a book that surprises with its twists and turns, a ribald sensibility, and rich historical details. And in Dulcy, Jamie Harrison has created an indelible heroine sure to capture the hearts of readers everywhere. THE WIDOW NASH is a a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, and Winner of the 2017 Reading the West Award. New, unread, first edition, first printing, in new, mylar-prootected dust jacket. {Not remainder-marked or price-clipped} l169. Seller Inventory # 025117
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