The Annunciation

At the heart of Ellen Gilchrist’s novel is the incorrigible Amanda McCamey. Leaving a troubled past behind, she marries into New Orleans’ high society but finds the privileged world stifling and unsatisfying. Seeking a quieter, more meaningful life, she divorces and moves to the Ozarks where she translates poetry and surrounds herself with artists and intellectuals. Her friend Katie, a brilliant sculptor, brings out the wild child in Amanda, but it is Will, an intense young musician, who captivates her. What begins as a sexual tryst quickly becomes a grand and impossible passion that mirrors the life of the eighteenth-century French poet whose work Amanda is translating. But her new life is interrupted when her past comes back to haunt her. With beauty, humor, and luminescent prose, Gilchrist paints an evocative portrait of a woman finally coming into her "Gilchrist's accomplished first novel is absorbing, rich, and evocative as she explores the heart and mind of a woman who has the courage to risk traveling an unconventional path in an effort to find the way to herself." ~Publishers Weekly"Women’s fiction par excellence … Amanda is in some ways a receptacle for current romantic clichés, but she is also a vivid character or dash and humor [who] has at last made her way to autonomy." ~Harper's Magazine"A fast-paced, often funny and touching novel." ~Library Journal"Both stylish and idiomatic—a rare and potent combination." ~Times Literary Supplement"The Annunciation, Ellen Gilchrist's debut novel, foreshadows the themes Gilchrist returns to repeatedly throughout her works -- growing up, leaving home, falling in and out of love, and trying again. Amanda McCamey's relatives can't see what is plain to everyone else around them. Amanda is in love with her cousin Guy and nothing but trouble can come from the relationship. [...] After her youthful indiscretion, Amanda almost becomes the woman her family expects her to be. She marries New Orleans wealth, joins the right country clubs, supports the arts, and almost acts like a matron until her early forties when her restless nature surfaces again. Amanda McCamey Ashe returns to college to pursue her love of languages and literature. When the opportunity arises to go to the University of Arkansas in the Ozark Mountains to work on translations, she divorces her husband, takes back her maiden name, sells her possessions, and plans a life alone writing. An infatuation with a young musician becomes a grand and seemingly impossible passion. Amanda's work on the life of an eighteenth-century French poetess parallels her own life in ways she never could have imagined. The Annunciation is a memorable, rich, evocative novel." ~Southern Scribe ReviewsAbout the Gilchrist is the award-winning author of more than 20 books, including novels, short story collections, essays and poetry. Her new collection of stories, Acts of God, will be published in April 2014 by Algonquin, along with the paperback release of her novel A Dangerous Age. She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas and Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and teaches creative writing and contemporary fiction at the University of Arkansas.