A masterful exhibition in storytelling; a breathless page-turner. Ligon
drives his narrative like a formula one racer. Buckle your seat belts
and get ready for a thrilling ride.--Jonathan Evison, West of Here
Part meditation on modern love's dark and often unexamined underbelly;
part can't-put-it-down-even-for-a-dinner-break-thriller, this novel
contains one of the most convincingly and complicatedly terrifying
fictional characters I have run into.--Pam Houston, Contents May Have
Shifted
A wildly original love story, a ghost story, a tense and suspenseful
story in which the wickedly talented Ligon channels voices--of the lost,
the longing, and the damned.--Jess Walter, We Live in Water
Praise for Safe in Heaven Dead:
A superbly convincing first novel....An expertly motivated
debut.--Kirkus, starred review
This debut novel instantly seizes and holds the
imagination.--Publishers Weekly, starred review
Ligon is firmly in control, laying out the elements of the story like
the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle.--New York Times Book Review
Nikki has spent her life running from her abusive mother and the violent
boyfriend she killed years ago, and now from his brother, Burke, just
released from prison. Burke doesn't know yet how his brother died, but
he's obsessed with finding Nikki and claiming her--and her daughter--as
his own. Now she's run out of room to run.
Samuel Ligon is the author of Safe in Heaven Dead (HarperCollins,
2003) and Drift and Swerve. His stories have appeared in more than
twenty literary journals. He teaches at Eastern Washington University's
Inland Northwest Center for Writers, and is the editor of Willow
Springs.
