Chosen

by Lesley Glaister

The last time Dodie sees her mother alive, Stella is unusually busy, tattily splendid in an old red velvet dress. Soon after this, Dodie’s brother Seth goes missing: the only trace of him is through postcards signed ‘Yours in the Lord’ addresses from the Soul Life Centre, New York state.

When Stella hangs herself, Dodie must leave her baby Jake at home and cross the Atlantic to bring Seth beck from the mysterious Soul Life Centre. But when she arrives, Seth is always one day away from seeing her. She becomes drawn — not always willingly — into the Brothers and Sisters’ communal living, meditation, fasting and chanting. Until baby Jake unexpectedly arrives at Soul Life and events take a shocking turn for Dodie.

(From Publisher).

Novelist Lesley Glaister was born in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England in 1956. She grew up in Suffolk, moving to Sheffield with her first husband, where she took a degree with the Open University. She was ‘discovered’ by the novelist Hilary Mantel when she attended a course given by the Arvon Foundation in 1989. Mantel was so impressed by her writing that she recommended her to a literary agent.
Lesley Glaister’s first novel, Honour Thy Father (1990), won both a Somerset Maugham Award and a Betty Trask Award. Her other novels include Trick or Treat (1991), Limestone and Clay (1993), for which she was awarded the Yorkshire Post Book Award (Yorkshire Author of the Year), Partial Eclipse (1994) and The Private Parts of Women (1996), Now You See Me (2001), the story of the unlikely relationship between Lamb, a former patient in a psychiatric ward, and Doggo, a fugitive on the run from the police, As Far as You Can Go (2004), a psychological drama, in which a young couple, Graham and Cassie, travel to a remote part of Australia to take up a caretaking job, only to be drawn into the dark secrets of their mysterious employers. Her latest novel is Nina Todd Has Gone (2007).
Lesley Glaister lives with her husband between Sheffield and Orkney. She has three sons and teaches Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.