Vigil for a Stranger

A chance encounter on a train leads painter Christine Ward to wonder whether Orin Pierce, her beloved college friend, believed dead for two decades, may actually be alive. As she begins to track down the man she believes he might be, she finds herself in the grip of a troubling past she thought she had come to terms with. In her search through the tangles of truth and illusion, memory and dream, she questions her roles as lover, mother, artist, and mourner of the dead. This haunting literary thriller is an uncompromising portrait of a contemporary woman in crisis.

Kitty Burns Florey is the author of ten novels and two works of nonfiction as well as many essays and short stories. Born in Syracuse, she has lived in Boston, Brooklyn, and New Haven. She now lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.