Emilia, a devoted mother, and her widowed son, Monte, live a mile apart on an isolated ranch in southwestern New Mexico. Bound by tradition and affection, their lives are routine and predictable. Enter Marla, an exotic stranger needing a favor, who seduces Monte and moves into his house, claiming love at first sight. Distant and evasive, she claims to work on line and to require nothing more than her laptop and the contents of her suitcase. She is obviously a city girl. Won’t she get bored? Has she no obligations? Where is her family? Lust and suspicion drive a wedge between mother and son as Emilia searches for answers.
Bev Magennis was born in Toronto, Canada. After a long career as a visual artist, she began writing in her sixties, inspired by a remote region of New Mexico where she lived for seventeen years. Bev was awarded a 2010 PEN Center Emerging Voices Fellowship and received a Norman Mailer Fiction Fellowship in 2011.