Much like the sturdy bones of the centuries-old house in Echo Her Lovely Bones, the women who inhabited its rooms are bound together through the letters they leave in the attic.
In these letters, which form the novel, the women reveal their dreams, their disappointments, their griefs, and their hopes. Each letter moves us through the female experience that is shaped as much by historical context as it is by each woman's own life.
The women of Echo Her Lovely Bones include: a daughter reluctantly leaving the comfort of her family in northern Virginia to settle in the harsh Kentucky frontier as a new bride; a newly emancipated slave learning what it means to be free; a young law student in the Roaring Twenties testing her family's (and cultural) expectations for women; a woman wrestling with a dark family secret and debilitating depression; a traditional wife and mother beginning to question those traditional values; her now-grown daughter living out the repercussions of her mother's abandonment; a woman being forced to strike out on her after divorcing her husband of two decades; and her daughter, twenty years later, struggling with family issues in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
These women echo the resilience of generations of women and affirm the importance of women finding their own voice.
Echo Her Lovely Bones is a special rerelease in a new second edition of Robinson's first novel, originally titled My Secrets Cry Aloud). Echo Her Lovely Bones includes a beautiful new cover by Annelisa Hermosilla, Foreword by Silas House (author of Lark Ascending, September 2022), a new chapter titled "Misty Newsom Albright November 1, 2020," Reading Group Guide, and Author's Note.
Praise for Echo Her Lovely Bones
"Perhaps the greatest gift of Robinson's novel, written in a variety of distinct voices which are all linked by her well-crafted prose, is that she's given us characters we will not forget because they are simultaneously completely new creations yet are like so many of the women who have shaped our own lives." -SILAS HOUSE, New York Times bestselling author and author of Lark Ascending
"Sherry Robinson has the ability to go right to the heart of things: a family, a personality... She does not gloss over or neglect the real complexity of life."-LEE SMITH, New York Times bestselling author and author of Blue Marlin
Praise for Shadows Hold Their Breath
"An impressive and thoughtful exploration of the mistakes good people make." Kirkus Reviews(starred review)
"Like [Henrik] Ibsen's A Doll's House and [Kate] Chopin's The Awakening, Shadows Hold Their Breath explores one woman's decision to leave her husband and children rather than crumble under the weight of patriarchal roles. Kat is also burdened by grief and an unspoken love that perhaps even in her nascent self-awareness is still taboo. The novel offers no easy answers, no pure absolution, just Kat's honest quest to accept-and live-her truth."
-MARIE MANILLA, author of The Patron Saint of Ugly
"Shadows Hold Their Breath is a complicated story about motherhood, grief, and self-discovery. Kat is a troubled, empathetic character searching for independence and understanding. Writing in spare, descriptive prose, Robinson asks difficult and important questions about responsibility and independence without offering facile answers."
-CARTER SICKELS, author The Prettiest Star
"Shadows Hold Their Breath dispels myths of maternal negligence and malice. Robinson demonstrates that there are no heroes or villains in most families, only the choices of a particular season and the reverberating consequences. Set in the wake of the Vietnam War, against the backdrop of social unrest and shifting patriarchy, this novel of identity will leave you rooting for a character whose choices could easily be condemned. Robinson's novel is a beautiful exercise in mercy."
-JULIE HENSLEY, author of Landfall: A Ring of Stories