From A Distance

Imagine a combination of THE LOVELY BONES and THE PRINCE OF TIDES. You then have Larry Baker s FROM A DISTANCE. Bobby Beaumont is a dying man with a secret. Her name is Ellie. She has been his secret for over thirty years, ever since he caught her stealing books at a Charleston store. He was sixteen; she was thirteen. His parents raised him in a world of Southern gentility. She was raised by a white-trash step-father and uncle who sexually abused her soon after her mother died and never stopped until they were confronted by Bobby. That confrontation leaves Bobby physically and emotionally scarred. It leaves Ellie in a mental institution. To escape Ellie s world, Bobby flees to New York City, to eventually become the most successful book publisher in America, leaving Charleston and his past behind. But he does not forget Ellie. How could he? She won't let him, even after she is dead. Weeks before his own death, he receives a final manuscript to edit...Ellie s version of their life and love together. The manuscript is incoherent, told from the point of view of an insane child who becomes an insane woman. A dead woman. Thirty years of private journals and cryptic diary entries. In alternating chapters of FROM A DISTANCE, Ellie tells her story. Her private life is juxtaposed with chapters telling the public history of Bobby Beaumont. Two different worlds. Those two versions of a shared experience will force a reader to decide which is fact, which is fiction.