Sister

By A. Manette Ansay

"When my brother disappeared in 1984, I began to see myself in the third person as if my life were a story being told to someone else."

Abigail Schiller lives a seemingly normal childhood in a rural Catholic commuinity in Wisconsin. But that life is shattered when her younger brother, Sam, vanishes at the age of seventeen, fleeing their father's rigid rules of masculinity and the violence their mother denies. Finally, thirty years old and expecting a child of her own, Abby is determined to retrace her lost sibling's dark descent--embarking upon an emotional journey that will test the strength of her spirit, and contradict everything, she once believed about her family and herself.

A stunning work of rare poignance and unsettling power, A. Manette Ansay's Sister marks the literary maturation of a truly exceptional voice in contemporary American fiction. Deftly spinning triumph out of tragedy, the award-winning author of Vinegar Hill offers us a fresh understanding, of family, memory, faith.Abigail Schiller lives in a seemingly normal childhood in a rural Catholic community in Wisconsin. But that life is shattered when her younger brother, Sam, vanishes at the age of seventeen, fleeing their father's rigid rules of masculinity and the violence their mother denies. Finally, thirty years old and expecting a child of her own, Abby is determined to retrace her lost sibling's dark descent--embarking upon an emotional journey that will test the strength of her spirit, and contradict everything she once believed her family and herself.

A stunning work of race poignance and unsettling power, A. Manette Ansay's Sister marks the literary maturation of a truly exceptional voice in contemporary American fiction. Deftly spinning triumph out of tragedy, the award-winning author of Vinegar Hill Offers us a fresh understanding of family, memory, and faith.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Mar 17, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061853005

A. Manette Ansay

A. Manette Ansay is the author of eight books, including Vinegar Hill, Midnight Champagne (a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), and Blue Water. She has received the Pushcart Prize, two Great Lakes Book Awards, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She teaches in the MFA writing program at the University of Miami.

Reviews for Sister

[berylweidenbach · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very small town in Wisconsin, Catholic, is where this sad, disturbing story takes place. Told in retrospect by the sister, Abigail Schiller about her family and what led up to the disappearance of her only brother, Sam at seventeen. The two of them, somewhat isolated on a farm were very close as young children, but as they grew, and the mother chose to work part time, the balance of the family was disturbed. The father, Gordon, uses physical abuse and shaming to make a man of his only son under the guise of "bonding," while scaring his young adolesent daugher with stories of rape and murder and making her feel uncomfortable with her blossoming body.As Abagail is sent to her grandmothers to recover from the resulting depression, her brothers life spins out of control. When he just doesn't come home one day in 1984, the family is shattered. With beauty and sadness, grace and honesty, Abigail at age 30 retraces the events that led to the disappearance in an emotional journey. What was her brothers fate? I am a new fan of Ansay. I now have several of her other books on my wish list. Her prose alone is worth the read!