Wide Open
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4.7 • 7 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Wide Open by Deborah Coates is the first book in a series of "startlingly original" (Booklist) contemporary fantasy novels set against the sweeping prairies and desolate byways of the American Midwest, creating "a rural backwater where the normal and paranormal seamlessly merge." (Publishers Weekly)
When Sergeant Hallie Michaels comes back to South Dakota from Afghanistan on ten days' compassionate leave, her sister Dell's ghost is waiting at the airport to greet her.
The sheriff says that Dell's death was suicide, but Hallie doesn't believe it. Something happened or Dell's ghost wouldn't still be hanging around. Friends and family, mourning Dell's loss, think Hallie's letting her grief interfere with her judgment.
The one person who seems willing to listen is the deputy sheriff, Boyd Davies, who shows up everywhere and helps when he doesn't have to.
As Hallie asks more questions, she attracts new ghosts, women who disappeared without a trace. Soon, someone's trying to beat her up, burn down her father's ranch, and stop her investigation.
Hallie's going to need Boyd, her friends, and all the ghosts she can find to defeat an enemy who has an unimaginable ancient power at his command.
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Wide Open has been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel, appeared on Locus Magazine's Recommended Reading List for first novels, and was chosen as a Tor.com Reviewer's Choice Pick for Favorite Book of the year. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction claimed that it is "one of the best first novels I've read in a long time" and Library Journal agrees that "fans of urban fantasies should enjoy the kick-ass [heroine]."
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A young woman who keeps company with spirits and a smalltown deputy haunted by premonitions become unusual allies in this refreshingly original dark fantasy debut. Sgt. Hallie Michaels has seen ghosts since her near-death experience in Afghanistan. When she returns home to Rapid City, S.D., on compassionate leave, the constant presence of her sister's insistent shade convinces her that Dell's suicide was actually murder. Grudgingly, Hallie teams up with deputy Boyd Davies, whose precognitive dreams tell him that someone is covering up the truth behind Dell's death. Together, the two investigate Dell's former employer, a research firm whose ability to control the weather derives from mastery of forces a bit darker than meteorological science. The plot turns on more than a few convenient coincidences, but Coates makes her premise believable through her canny and credible depiction of life in a rural backwater where the normal and paranormal seamlessly merge.
Customer Reviews
Wide open
There are many things I could say about this book--it was engaging (or actually engrossing, because I had trouble putting it down), but what I really want to know is when the author was in my husband's pickup, or his tool shed, or driving up our lane looking at the cattle on pasture. Uncanny gift for detail and vivid, mind's eye descriptions. Add in the rare ability to convince the reader to suspend reality for a bit, and you have a winner!
And, yes, Deborah, math defines the world. I admire a woman who knows that. Now get the next one done and published, because we know there's another one coming.