Product Description
Lena, the transcriptionist, sits alone in a room far away from the hum of the newsroom that is the heart of the Record, the big city newspaper for which she works. For years, she has been the ever-present link for reporters calling in stories from around the world. Hooked up to a machine that turns spoken words to print, Lena is the vein that connects the organs of the paper. She is loyal, she is unquestioning, yet technology is dictating that her days there are numbered.
When she reads a shocking piece in the paper about a Jane Doe mauled to death by a lion, she recognizes the woman in the picture. They had met on a bus just a few days before. Obsessed with understanding what caused the woman to deliberately climb into the lion’s den, Lena begins a campaign for truth that will destroy the Record’s complacency and shake the venerable institution to its very foundation. In doing so she also recovers a life—her own.
When she reads a shocking piece in the paper about a Jane Doe mauled to death by a lion, she recognizes the woman in the picture. They had met on a bus just a few days before. Obsessed with understanding what caused the woman to deliberately climb into the lion’s den, Lena begins a campaign for truth that will destroy the Record’s complacency and shake the venerable institution to its very foundation. In doing so she also recovers a life—her own.
Reviews/Praise
—Publishers Weekly (May 2014)
“Xe Sands’s ironic tone fits Lena, the questioning transcriptionist who begins to wonder about herself and life. . . . Sands’s narration reflects the loneliness and emptiness that inspire her new direction.”
—AudioFile
“Soulful, perceptive.”
—Buffalo News
“Rowland . . . has written a strange, mesmerizing novel about language, isolation, ethics, technology, and the lack of trust between institutions and the people they purportedly serve. . . . A fine debut about the decline of newspapers and the subsequent loss of humanity.”
—Booklist [HC starred review]
“Disturbing and powerful; the skillfully drawn Lena may remind some readers of an existentialist hero.”
—Library Journal
Author Bio
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