Outside Valentine: A Novel [Hardcover]

Liza Ward (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 12, 2004

A debut novelist interweaves a trio of voices-haunting, dangerous, full of longing-mysteriously linked by a shocking crime and the search to heal the past

Many long years have passed since the winter of blinding white when Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate drove across the hushed midwestern landscape and left a trail of blood and pain. So why does Lowell, a Manhattan collector of antiquities, still dream of what happened, despite his wife's best attempts to draw him back and offer comfort? And who is Susan, the teenager who appoints herself a detective, piecing together the story of the murders while wondering if she'll ever be loved like Starkweather loved his girl?

And then there's Caril Ann herself, who takes us back to relive the ride she swears she could not control. It began on the day Charlie first saw her, dangling her bare legs off the edge of a tree house. It ended outside Valentine, Nebraska, on that night when she still believed that life could somehow go back to being normal . . . '

Every so often a novel comes along that is capable of redeeming the losses it so devastatingly conveys. Disturbing, bittersweet, and lyrical, Liza Ward's Outside Valentine is a story of people torn apart by tragedy and yet, finally, transformed by love.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this riveting literary suspense novel, first-timer Ward presents in lean, luminous prose a precarious world where true love can ravage as well as redeem, exploring a series of murders in Lincoln, Nebr., in the 1950s from the perspective of three narrators. After an argument with her volatile stepfather, 14-year-old Caril Ann Fugate flees into the woods behind her house, where she spies (the real-life killer) red-haired Charles Starkweather, carrying a .22 rifle. From their first uneasy meeting, the girl senses that she and Starkweather are meant to be together. Ward eerily evokes a romantic union destined for disaster; the emotionally unsettled Starkweather pledges eternal love to the impressionable teen as he entangles her in murders that change their lives forever. Four years after the slayings that shook her hometown, Lincoln teenager Susan Hurst continues to pore over newspaper clippings about Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, secretly envious of their dark, desperate love. Bemused by a distant father and mercurial mother, Susan has trouble relating to peers until she meets Lowell Bowman, son of two of the murder victims. Thirty years later, Lowell Bowman, now a Manhattan art collector, remains haunted by visions of his parents' murder. He has grown apart from his wife, who pesters him about retrieving a mysterious safe deposit box. Traumatized by the past and fearful of the future, Bowman embarks on a solitary quest to examine the contents of the box and the purpose of his life. On the novel's acknowledgments page, Ward thanks her father for allowing her to explore such "delicate material." An already chilling novel drops a few more degrees at the unsettling admission that it's based in truth.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School - Ward skillfully tells the story of seemingly unrelated characters whose lives are changed forever because of the actions of serial killer Charlie Starkweather and his girlfriend, 14-year-old Caril Ann. She finds herself an accomplice to the killings, which occurred in the rural Midwest in the late 1950s. Ward interrupts Caril Ann's narrative to fast-forward to the early 1960s and introduces readers to a 12-year-old girl whose mother leaves home one day and never returns. Lonely Puggy becomes obsessed with the recent murders that occurred in her small Nebraska town. She is particularly attracted to Lowell, a boy whom she has never met but whose parents were two of Starkweather's victims. He, too, is now alone, and Puggy eventually seeks him out and befriends him. Ward again fast-forwards to give voice to Lowell and his current life in New York in the 1990s as he struggles to make sense of his adult troubles. The author continues to move easily back and forth in time within her characters' stories. She brings her characters full circle and gives readers insight into the ripple effects that lost love and acts of violence can have on the human heart. While she does not flinch from telling of the brutality of the real-life Starkweather killings, she writes with a sensitivity not unlike that of Alice Sebold in The Lovely Bones. The characters in Outside Valentine act and feel authentic, and Ward's use of alternating voices makes this novel a real page-turner. - Catherine Gilbride, Farifax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; First Edition edition (August 12, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805075984
• ISBN-13: 978-0805075984
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,382,818 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful and poignant telling of a tragic story, September 24, 2004

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Outside Valentine: A Novel (Hardcover)

In 1957, Charlie Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate went on a killing rampage, making the dark days of a brutally cold winter even darker. For days, they gripped the Midwest with a tangible fear. Charlie claimed that everything he did was for Caril Ann. She claimed that she did nothing wrong. Whatever their motives, their actions took the lives of many, changed many more, and touched almost everyone across the country in one way or another.

OUTSIDE VALENTINE is a tale written from three very disparate perspectives. Related at different points in time, the whole awful story of the bloody trail left in Starkweather's wake takes on dimension. It could scarcely be told in a better way. Liza Ward gives us a feel for the survivors' deepest thoughts, Caril Ann's insistent self-acquittal, and the appalling thrill that we get when we hear of such a shocking horror, deftly illustrating how we allow ourselves to lionize the monsters capable of unthinkably horrific crimes.

Caril Ann was 14 when Charlie found her in his tree house. That day sealed the fate of nearly a dozen people, whose only fault was being in the wrong place when she and Starkweather passed into their lives. The couple indulged their hatred, leaving a path of death and broken futures. A quote attributed to Charlie says it all: "The more I look at people, the more I hate them."

Five years after the murders, Puggy, a teenaged girl abandoned by her mother, finds herself obsessing over the story of Charlie and Caril Ann. She has built the two lovers into legendary figures in her mind. Secretly, she wishes for someone to love her the way Charlie loved Caril Ann. In a sense, she admires them --- until the reality of their mindless cruelty sinks in. One of Puggy's schoolmates lives next door to Lowell Bowman, who was away at boarding school when Starkweather and Fugate broke into the family home and killed his mom, dad, maid and dog. Puggy is transfixed by this brooding young man, claiming that she loves him even before she meets him. It becomes her goal to win his heart and hear the gruesome story of his parents' last hours.

Nineteen years further on, Lowell is still struggling to regain a normal life. He has pushed his wife away and never got close to his children, retreating to the easy comfort of liquor. He cares --- there is no doubt about that. He wants to reach out, but he fears Starkweather and Fugate destroyed a part of him, along with his family. And he wonders if he can ever get it back.

The author has a personal investment in this story. She lost her grandparents to the murderous pair nearly half a century ago. It is that very closeness to the crimes that gives Liza Ward's writing such power and poignancy. At one point, Caril Ann muses, "When I am half asleep and everything is dark, ghosts rise out of the prairie and swim across my eyes. The girl crawls up from the storm cellar with glass in her knee." It almost sounds like she has regrets. If Ward can make us care for Caril Ann, even just a little, imagine the humanity she can breathe into the victims. Two thumbs up for OUTSIDE VALENTINE.

--- Reviewed by Kate Ayers

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deeply moving, December 22, 2004

By 

D. Armstrong (Greenwich, CT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Outside Valentine: A Novel (Hardcover)

This uniquely absorbing debut novel richochets through generations revealing the engrossing tale of the Starkweather murders; our country's first teenage serial killers. Even true crime buffs will find this a must read as the author is the granddaughter of two of the victims. Ward has the haunting perspective that can only be had through a lifetime of introspection trying to understand the incomprehensible. Her fine pitch and uncanny insight leave the reader waiting for more. Every character in this novel stands on its own but together they are a rich reveal of how actions can reverberate through the ages; leaving a wake of despair, destruction and, ultimately, redemption. Excellent.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a novel worth reading, December 25, 2004

By 

Charlie_in_la "charlie" (los angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Outside Valentine: A Novel (Hardcover)

I am fascinated by the author's technique of using three voices to tell this story, and how they all come together by the end of the book. Each voice evokes the flavor of his or her era. A very talented author has shared a book with us. I hope she will share more.

I do have one bit of advice to you, if you should read this wonderful book.....In the first few chapters, take note of the years....this is a story told by three people, in different times. Get to know them.


Thanks, Liza Ward, for your book.