After Life

"First, I had to get his body into the boat." This ominous opening begins a tale of secrets and lies, visions, and hovering spirits. At its center is Naomi Ash, a young woman who has come of age on the frigid banks of a western New York lake community called Train Line. Here she grows up and falls in love in a town where mediums, spiritualists, and professional clairvoyants hold "psychic fairs" to help make ends meet. When the skeleton of Peter, Naomi's ex-lover, surfaces, the mystery of his death must be uncovered. In the process, Naomi, now a clairvoyant herself, unveils a world where the secrets of the dead cannot stay buried and where her past must confront her precarious present.

Author Biography: Rhian Ellis holds an MFA from the University of Montana. She lived and worked in the community that is the basis for this novel, though she has not called up the dead or conducted a seance herself. She has taught writing at Ithaca College and elsewhere. After Life is her first novel.