Tethered: A Novel [Paperback]

Amy MacKinnon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 11, 2009

Clara Marsh is an undertaker who doesn’t believe in God. She spends her solitary life among the dead, preparing their last baths and bidding them farewell with a bouquet from her own garden. Her carefully structured life shifts when she discovers a neglected little girl, Trecie, playing in the funeral parlor, desperate for a friend.

It changes even more when Detective Mike Sullivan starts questioning her again about a body she prepared three years ago, an unidentified girl found murdered in a nearby strip of woods. Unclaimed by family, the community christened her Precious Doe. When Clara and Mike learn Trecie may be involved with the same people who killed Precious Doe, Clara must choose between the stead-fast existence of loneliness and the perils of binding one’s life to another.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

MacKinnon's debut offers an authentic view of an undertaker's job, but the passivity of her emotionally wounded heroinemay exasperate some readers. In Brockton,Mass., lonely Clara Marsh tends to the dead at Bartholomew Funeral Home, whose kindly owner reminds Clara of the undertaker she met as a child at her mother's funeral. When Trecie, a neglected little girl, begins hanging around the funeral parlor, Clara thinks nothing of it until a routine body pickup uncovers a stash of child pornography and Clara recognizes Trecie in a video. The ensuing investigation also points to Precious Doe, an unidentified child murdered three years earlier and whose grave Clara often visits in secret. Aided by a sensitive Irish cop, Det. Mike Sullivan, to whom she's attracted, Clara tries to unravel the mystery, even if that means confronting her own unpleasant past. Some affecting, understated prose only partially redeems the flat story line. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Undertaker Clara Marsh doesn’t believe in God. It’s hardly a wonder; she has had little in life to give her cause for faith. After surviving the car accident that killed her free-spirited mother, she was raised by a grandmother who beat her with a brush and tore out her hair. When Clara finally escapes her grandmother’s clutches, she enrolls in mortuary school and lands a job at a New England funeral home whose kindhearted owners take her in as their own. Clara finds herself drawn to the cold case of “Precious Doe,” an unidentified teen found murdered in the nearby woods. She senses it’s more than coincidence when a neglected young waif named Trecie appears in the funeral parlor where she works. Could Trecie be destined for the same fate as “Precious Doe”? Throughout her life, Clara has taken great pains to remain uninvolved in others’ lives. But this time it’s different. MacKinnon’s fascination with the inner workings of her uncle’s funeral business inspired this haunting, gracefully rendered debut. --Allison Block --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Broadway; 1 Reprint edition (August 11, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307409201
• ISBN-13: 978-0307409201
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,117,481 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Cut Above, August 12, 2008

By 

Beach Reader (Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tethered: A Novel (Hardcover)

My favorite books tend to be the ones that address real human emotion; nothing fluffy about human emotion. And Tethered doesn't pretend that there is. The funeral home employee, Clara, is so real and just dead on (no pun intended!) to any real person who has endured anything other than a starlet's life. All of Mackinnon's characters are real people, her talent lies in never pandering to literary stereotypes or the demand for a perfect heroine with "cute" and easily overcome flaws. As Clara's life, past and present, unfolds around the mystery of Precious Doe's short life and heartbreaking death I found myself identifying MUCH more than I would have expected with her isolation and desire to simply move on and have an easy, if lonely, life, and then her ultimate struggle to overcome those all-too-human tendencies.

Book clubs will have much to discuss with themes of solitude, the limits of memory, retribution and redemption. Highly recommended.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing debut - read it in one day, October 17, 2008

By 

ellen "ellen in atlanta" (Atlanta, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Tethered: A Novel (Hardcover)

Tethered is not a read for everyone. Yet, it is, just told a little differently.
Clara Marsh hasn't had a happy life. She now lives peacefully among the dead - preparing the dead for funerals at a funeral parlor. Her boss and his wife love her as a daughter, but Clara can't seem to reach out and join humanity.
Here comes a little girl, Trecie, who plays and hangs out at the funeral parlor. Something is strangely familiar about the girl - whether Trecie reminds Clara of herself as a child, or of a victim of murder she prepared for burial a few years before. Clara and Trecie form a kind of friendship. A local cop, Mike, whom Clara has a mutual attraction with also is in the periphery of Clara's life.
I read this book in one day. It touched chords in me. Maybe weird curiosity how one prepares the dead - maybe the brilliant way MacKinnon brings her characters to life - you feel their pain, their hopes, the loneliness...
It brought to mind when I was a kid in college taking an art appreciation course - my prof had the class go to an exhibit of a Polish artist. The paintings were so stark it hit you and made a lasting impression. It is this feeling I get from Tethered.
I must say that the cover was what drew me initially to this book. You are caught between curiosity and empathy and you want to see what this book is about.
A brilliant debut. MacKinnon's style is like one of the Mozart works Clara uses to keep her company while she performs this service for the dead - it is heartfelt, captivating, and oh so amazing.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great debut mystery, August 12, 2008

By 

John Elder Robison (Massachusetts, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tethered: A Novel (Hardcover)

I was privileged to read a review copy of Amy's novel a few weeks ago. Tethered is a well-crafted story that will leave you thinking, "That could be happening right here in my city." Nothing is as it seems, and you meet a compassionate and remarkable heroine in the strangest place - the embalming room of a funeral home.