The Ophelia Girls: A Novel

About the Author\nJANE HEALEY studied writing in the MFA program at CUNY Brooklyn College and is the author of the novel The Animals at Lockwood Manor, winner of the HWA Debut Crown Award. Her short fiction has been short-listed for the Bristol Short Story Prize, the Costa Short Story Award, and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She lives in Edinburgh.\nA mother’s secret past and her daughter’s present collide in this richly atmospheric novel from the acclaimed author of The Animals at Lockwood Manor.\nIn the summer of 1973, Ruth and her four friends were obsessed with Pre-Raphaelite paintings—and a little bit obsessed with each other. Drawn to the cold depths of the river by Ruth’s house, the girls pretend to be the drowning Ophelia, with increasingly elaborate tableaux. But by the end of that fateful summer, real tragedy finds them along the banks.\nTwenty-four years later, Ruth returns to the suffocating, once-grand house she grew up in, the mother of young twins and seventeen-year-old Maeve, whose leukemia is recently in remission. Joining the family in the country is Stuart, Ruth’s childhood friend, who is quietly insinuating himself into their lives and gives Maeve the attention she longs for. She is unsure of her place in the world now that she is cancer-free. Her parents just want her to be an ordinary teenage girl. But what teenage girl is ordinary?\nAlternating between the two fateful summers, The Ophelia Girls is a suspense-filled exploration of mothers and daughters, illicit desire, and the perils and power of being a young woman.