Book Description

1945 Chicago. Anything can happen, and for Richard Marchetti, it usually does. Marie Marchetti, however, doesn't know that about her husband. To her, they have the perfect life. Until little things start to pop up that put her on alert: late night phone calls, cryptic receipts hidden in the basement, and a gun in his desk drawer. When she learns he secretly attends a mobster's funeral, her feelings are confirmed. And when she inadvertently interrupts a meeting between Richard and his so-called business associates, he causes her to fall down the basement steps, compelling Marie to run for her life. Ending up in Atchison, Kansas, Marie quickly sets up a new life for herself. She meets Karen Franklin, a woman who will become her lifelong best friend, and rents a coach house apartment behind a three-story Victorian home. But her attempts at a new life are fraught with the fear that Richard will show up at any time -- and who knows what he or his associates will do then? Ironically, it is the discovery of the identity of her real father and his ethnicity that unexpectedly changes her life forever. Deftly portraying a life in a terrifying transition, Osmund tears open layers of confusion, anger, fear, and shame that are universal to the human experience of catharsis and growth. With extraordinary insight into our most basic need for trust and connection, The Coach House expertly builds tension as it brings into the open our primal instincts for survival and community.