Suspicious river
By: Laura Kasischke.
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 271
Subjects: Prostitutes -- Fiction; Sexual abuse victims -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
Description: Leila Murray is the novel's narrator - young, married, living in a small town, and working in a motel as a receptionist, then as a prostitute. Leila slowly discloses the details of her childhood, her mother's murder, and the numb promiscuity of her adolescence, while contemporary events unfold and lead her to the dark turn her life will take one October weekend when she meets Gary Jensen.

These incidents are juxtaposed with scenes from Leila's childhood and it becomes clear that the seemingly random abuses and perils of her adult life parallel those Leila witnessed and suffered as a child. She is reliving them, uncertain whether she will survive, or indeed, if she wishes to.