As Good As Dead

At the high-octane Iowa Writers' Workshop, small-town Charlotte is thrilled and confounded by her relationship with charismatic and sophisticated Esme: One moment, Esme is Charlotte's best friend; the next, Esme shuns her. After a tumultuous weekend, Charlotte's insecurities and her resentment over Esme's confusing behavior reach a fever pitch. Blindly, Charlotte betrays her friend-in the process, unleashing a cascade of calamities on her own head.

Twenty years later, Charlotte is a married novelist and professor--when Esme returns, bringing the past that Charlotte grieved over, and believed buried, to Charlotte's doorstep. Charlotte is both mystified and elated by her friend's reappearance. Though she yearns to redeem the old friendship and her transgression, she is wary, and rightly so: Esme makes no mention of Charlotte's old betrayal but her invitation to dinner leads to a request--one that is highly unethical and includes an unstated threat.

Charlotte is faced with a choice: comply and violate her integrity or refuse and risk the destruction of her marriage. As Good As Dead performs an exquisitely tuned psychological high-wire act as it explores the dangers that lie in wait when trust is poisoned by secrets and fears.

Elizabeth Evans's five previous books include The Blue Hour, Suicide's Girlfriend, and Carter Clay. She received the Iowa Author Award in 2010. Among her other awards are a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the James Michener Fellowship, the Lila Wallace Award, and the Four Corners Award. She is a professor in the creative writing program at the University of Arizona. She lives in Tucson.