Amanda Gibson

In the Absence of Serpents Amanda Gibson

To escape her former life and everyone in it, food writer Lorelai Erland relocates to a tiny, seemingly idyllic hamlet in the middle of the Rocky Mountains of northwestern Wyoming. There, she owns and operates a bookstore on Main Street, attempting to blend in and carry on a life of anonymity: a goal Lorelai soon finds is impossible to realize in the town of Langley. From the Elvis impersonator/illusionist to a woman who makes "spiritual house calls," Lorelai begins to notice the oddities her neighbors exhibit on a daily basis. Lorelai finds kinship in Edie Waters, the hard-partying, neurotic schoolteacher struggling with a dead-end relationship of her own, and Eric Southerland, the handsome but hardheaded lawyer, also new to the town. By hiring help in the bookstore, Lorelai also provides security and protection to sixteen-year-old Skye Byrd, who desperately yearns for a more stable home life free from the clutches of her violent brother. Throughout her struggle to fit into her new life, Lorelai influences those around her in immeasurable ways.