Trespass

"An enrapturing and ruthless storyteller, Valerie Martin possesses a predator's ability to mesmerize her prey." Chicago Tribune The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your group's discussion of Valerie Martin'sTrespass, an ambitious intellectual thriller about a comfortable, cultivated American family forced into sudden proximity with the discomfiting, the lawless, and the wildparticularly the wildness of history. To Chloe Dale, the initial threat is Salome Dragovich, the smart, sexually confident young woman with whom her cherished son Toby has fallen in love. That Salome is also a refugee from the brutal war in Croatia only complicates her feelings. Is this girl, who seems to live on coffee and argument, someone to be resented or pitied or feared? And why does Chloe's husband Brendan refuse to see what a threat she is? At the same time, Chloe is disturbed by a poacher who is stalking the woods near her Connecticut home, shooting whatever animals catch his fancy with little regard for his neighbors' property lines or safety. Oddly, the poacher, too, is a foreigner, though no one seems to know what country he comes from. Chloe thinks of him as Middle Eastern, an idea that may be partly inspired by the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq. Chloe, Brendan and Toby are united in their outrage at their country's imperial venture but feel helpless to stop it. A further layer of narrative concerns the Dales' professional lives. Chloe is an illustrator, and her latest project is a new edition of Emily Bronte'sWuthering Heights,a novel that has a dark, resentful outsider at its heart. Brendan, a historian, is writing a book on the Crusades and the ambivalent figure of Frederick II, the Christian emperor who deeply respected Islam and was excommunicated for it by the Pope, with catastrophic repercussions for relations between the European and Arab worlds. As Salome becomes a more exigent and abrasive presence and the poacher a more intrusive one, tensions within the family mount. People say things they don't mean or mean too much. Violence becomes more than a metaphor. And the enthralled reader comes to see how thin a membrane separates the personal from the political, memory from history.Trespassis a work of seriousness, tragic depth, and spellbinding narrative power.Martin, Valerie is the author of 'Trespass ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780385515450 and ISBN 0385515456.