FINDING KATIE
Anne Marshall
RIGHTS AVAILABLE: All rights handled by the bks Agency
FINDING KATIE' IS A BEAUTIFULLY- WROUGHT, EVOCATIVE AND SEARING PORTRAIT OF A MARRIAGE ON THE BRINK OF COLLAPSE, THE UNTHINKABLE THINGS THAT PEOPLE WILL DO TO PROTECT THEIR OWN HAPPINESS, THE LIES THOSE ACTIONS ENTAIL AND - ULTIMATELY - THE CHOICES WE MAKE WHEN THERE IS NO GOING BACK.
Set in Cornwall, Finding Katie is a romantic, literary-crossover reading-group novel that explores a fated love affair and the fragments of the relationship that are left in the wake of its discovery.
KATE is beautiful, and desirable, but feels invisible. Her marriage to DAVID is strained and as the kids prepare to go to university she realises that she and David have both lost their way. Out of the blue, she receives an email from JAMES, an old school friend, and they strike up an affair. Kate’s insecurities fall away and she feels like a young woman again. David watches her, but he doesn't see 'Kate' anymore.
David notices the new make-up, hair, underwear, and perfume - the scent she wore when they first met. He is turned on by this 'new' woman but interwoven with his desire, jealousy and suspicions become increasingly palpable; the scent turns to that of deceit and duplicity. The house is charged with her presence, but Kate is elusive.
David hacks her email, tracks her phone, locates webcams, follows Kate in the car, and takes pictures. His watching becomes obsessive and voyeuristic. He falls in love with this new Kate, 'Katie' as her lover calls her.
On the night that James and Kate decide to leave their marriages, there’s an accident and David is involved. He leaves the scene, unaware that James is not just injured but lies dead in the car park. Kate knows nothing of this.
Over the next few days, David watches as Kate frantically tries to contact her lover. David is the first one to discover that James died. He is trapped in a spiral of fear, shame, and blind panic.
Kate is inconsolable upon finding out that her lover is dead; her grief is raw, visceral, and hidden from all but David. She has no recognisable claim on James’s life - at the funeral, Kate can only watch his widow and son; she sits alone. The service is for James, but not Katie’s James. The photo on the front of the service sheet is of James wearing the same shirt she wore after they first slept together. It’s more than she can bear.
David and Kate are stuck in a marriage entrenched in guilt and grief. A man is dead.
They must both decide: does it matter where it starts, or only where it ends?
After setting up a UK-based publishing house for a North- American entertainment corporation that involved producing an annual that sold in excess of one million copies a year and creating a list of children’s and adult titles, Anne Marshall gave up the role of Publisher to concentrate on her own writing.
Anne is a graduate of the Curtis Brown creative writing course and splits her time between Cornwall and London.