Desire Lines: A Novel [Hardcover]

Christina Baker Kline (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 16, 1998

Desire Lines is a taut, penetrating new novel filled with psychological suspense, sensitivity, and emotional complexity by the critically acclaimed author of Sweet Water.

On the night of her high school graduation in 1986, Kathryn Campbell's best friend, Jennifer, vanished without a trace. It's been ten years since then, but Kathryn still feels the conspicuous void in her life--- and the nagging, guilty sense that she has failed her friend.

When a divorce sends Kathryn reeling back to the Maine town where she grew up, the young journalist finds herself face-to-face with her past. At twenty-eight, she's been living for far too long on memories and questions; now she needs to take a hard look at her own life at the same time that she is delving into the mystery of what happened to her friend.

As she explores the seemingly random series of events that led up to Jennifer's disappearance, a pattern slowly begins to take shape. All the puzzle pieces are at her fingertips--it's a matter of whether Kathryn can put them together in a way that makes sense. As she faces her own fear and grief, she is finally able to come to terms with the ways in which the loss of her friend has shaped her life and the lives of those who knew her. In the process, Kathryn realizes that if she is ever going to understand the circumstances of Jennifer's disappearance, she is going to have to expose herself to the same risks and dangers. Ultimately, Kathryn's quest to find out the truth becomes a quest to save her own life as she races against time to keep Jennifer's fate from becoming hers. Desire Lines is a remarkable novel about friendship, memory, loss, and resurrection.

Desire Lines is a taut, penetrating new novel filled with psychological suspense, sensitivity, and emotional complexity by the critically acclaimed author of Sweet Water.

On the night of her high school graduation in 1986, Kathryn Campbell's best friend, Jennifer, vanished without a trace. It's been ten years since then, but Kathryn still feels the conspicuous void in her life--- and the nagging, guilty sense that she has failed her friend.

When a divorce sends Kathryn reeling back to the Maine town where she grew up, the young journalist finds herself face-to-face with her past. At twenty-eight, she's been living for far too long on memories and questions; now she needs to take a hard look at her own life at the same time that she is delving into the mystery of what happened to her friend.

As she explores the seemingly random series of events that led up to Jennifer's disappearance, a pattern slowly begins to take shape. All the puzzle pieces are at her fingertips--it's a matter of whether Kathryn can put them together in a way that makes sense. As she faces her own fear and grief, she is finally able to come to terms with the ways in which the loss of her friend has shaped her life and the lives of those who knew her. In the process, Kathryn realizes that if she is ever going to understand the circumstances of Jennifer's disappearance, she is going to have to expose herself to the same risks and dangers. Ultimately, Kathryn's quest to find out the truth becomes a quest to save her own life as she races against time to keep Jennifer's fate from becoming hers. Desire Lines is a remarkable novel about friendship, memory, loss, and resurrection.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author of Sweet Water offers a taut, absorbing novel about a woman who must solve a haunting mystery in order to move on with her life. Kathryn Campbell has been in emotional limbo since the mysterious disappearance of her best friend, Jennifer, on the night of their 1986 high-school graduation. A decade later, she finds herself returning to their hometown of Bangor, Maine?even though, with a failed marriage under her belt and a journalism career idling in neutral, moving back in with her (also divorced) mother is probably not the best way to boost her self-esteem. So when a friend asks Kathryn to write a newspaper story about Jennifer, Kathryn reluctantly agrees. Since Kathryn's return coincides with her class's reunion, she has ample opportunity to interview the four former companions who were with Jennifer on that fateful night, as well as others who might have played a hand in Jennifer's baffling disappearance. As Kathryn delves into her best friend's background, unnerving facts about the seemingly golden girl start to emerge, and soon it is obvious that someone is trying to thwart her investigation. The mystery of why Jennifer vanished becomes even more puzzling as new facts come to light, and Kathryn's eventual insight that some ambiguities are part of life brings depth to the narrative. Kline's edge-of-the-seat denouement ties up the plot threads with dexterity and also allows for a plausible future for Kathryn herself. Agent, Beth Vesel for Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Grieving over her recent divorce, Kathryn Campbell quits her newspaper job and moves back to small-town Maine in time for her ten-year high school reunion. It's also the anniversary of her best friend Jennifer's mysterious disappearance?despite years of searching, only a few meager clues have surfaced. When former classmate Jack Ledbetter, assistant news editor for the Bangor Daily News, asks Kathryn to follow up on the story, she faces her toughest journalistic assignment to date. Linking the disparate events that led up to that fateful night may be Kathryn's last chance to overcome the deep guilt she feels for somehow failing her friend. When she starts receiving threatening messages, Kathryn realizes that Jennifer may truly be dead and that she may be next. Kline (Sweet Water, LJ 5/15/93) creates an intriguing and suspenseful novel of self-discovery as Kathryn confronts old friends with long-held secrets. For all fiction collections.?Christine Perkins, Jackson Cty. Lib. Svcs., Medford, OR
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (December 16, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688151078
• ISBN-13: 978-0688151072
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,796,983 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Christina Baker Kline is a novelist, nonfiction writer and editor. In addition to Bird in Hand, her novels include The Way Life Should Be, Desire Lines and Sweet Water. She is Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University.

Kline was born in Cambridge, England, and raised there as well as in the American South and Maine. She is a graduate of Yale, Cambridge, and the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in Fiction Writing. In addition to Fordham, she has taught fiction and nonfiction writing, poetry, English literature, literary theory, and women's studies at Yale, New York University,and Drew University. She is a recent recipient of a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Fellowship, a Writer-in-Residence Fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and a Fordham Research Grant. She donates her time and editing skills to a number of arts organizations in New Jersey and Maine.

Kline is coeditor, with Anne Burt, of a collection of personal essays called About Face: Women Write About What They See When They Look in the Mirror. She also commissioned and edited two widely praised collections of original essays on the first year of parenthood and raising young children, Child of Mine and Room to Grow. She is co-author, with her mother, Christina Looper Baker, of a book on feminist mothers and daughters, The Conversation Begins. Her essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Yale Review, Southern Living, Ms., Parents, and Family Life, among other places.

Kline has worked as a caterer, cook, and personal chef on the Maine coast, Martha's Vineyard, and in Charlottesville, Virginia. She lives in an old house in Montclair, New Jersey, with her husband, David Kline; three boys, Hayden, Will, and Eli; and Lucy, an English springer spaniel. She spends summers with extended family in an even older house on Mount Desert Island in Maine.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Definite Page Turner..., April 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Desire Lines: A Novel (Hardcover)

A fan of Baker Kline's since her first novel SWEET WATER, she shows that she hasn't lost her touch as a talented writer with this new book. Christina Baker Kline has written a powerful story about friendship, family, loss, and redemption. Her characters are so real, the plot fresh, and the dialogue crisp. You become so involved in Katherine's search for her missing friend, Jennifer, -- and Katherine's own search to find herself -- you will not be able to put the book down until you turn the last page. Desire Lines is definitely one of the best new books of 1999.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very well written novel that balances it all, July 29, 2003

By 

Laura Crowson "Laura" (Peoria, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Desire Lines: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is the second novel I have ready by this author. I enjoyed Sweet Water very much and this novel did not disappoint either. The author does an excellent job of slowly letting the story unravel naturally. Characters are very realistic as are their relationships and the strains between people, even with the passing of time. I found this book very readable and am surprised it is already out of print and didn't really make much of a showing. The writer is extremely talented and the mystery absorbed me as a reader. I reccommend finding a used copy from one of the amazon used booksellers. I'm glad I did.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Ho Hum, July 31, 2002

By 

BeachReader (Delaware) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Desire Lines (Audio Cassette)

This was a quick afternoon's beach read--I may not have finished it if I had packed another book to read. No great literary value here-- in fact, the story had a lot of holes in it, so I was forced to use my imagination.

In Bangor, Maine, on the night of her high school graduation in 1986, Jennifer Pelletier, Kathryn Campbell's best (she thought) friend, just disappeared from the face of the earth. She walked away from a bonfire and was never seen again.

Ten years later, a few weeks before their class reunion, Kathryn, recently divorced, returns to her mother's home in Bangor. She is still haunted by Jennifer's disappearance with its lack of closure and begins to write an article for the local paper, resurrecting the case in the eyes of the town and those who knew the missing girl.

I DID learn one thing from this book: the meaning of "desire lines". This means the trail through woods or brush, often barely discernible, showing that someone else has walked there before. It is a term used in orienteering and hiking.