Publisher Description
A literary tour de force from the acclaimed author of The Blessings-a riveting novel about one of the most urgent crises of our time.
One August afternoon, as single mother Maggie Daley prepares to send her only child off to college, their world is shattered by news of a mass shooting at the local mall in rural Maine. As reports and updates about the tragedy begin to roll in, Maggie, an English professor, is further stunned to learn that the gunman had been a student of hers: Nathan Dugan was an awkward, complicated young man whose quiet presence in her classroom had faded from her memory-but not, it seems, the memories of his classmates.
When a viral blog post hints at the existence of a dark, violence-tinged essay Nathan had written during Maggie's freshman comp seminar, Maggie soon finds herself at the center of a heated national controversy. Could the overlooked essay have offered critical red flags that might have warned of, or even prevented, the murders to come? As the media storm grows around her, Maggie makes a series of desperate choices that threaten to destroy not just the personal and professional lives she's worked so hard to build, but-more important-the happiness and safety of her sensitive daughter, Anna.
Engrossing and provocative, combining sharp plot twists with Juska's award-winning, trademark literary sophistication, If We Had Known is at once an unforgettable mother-daughter journey, an exquisite portrait of a community in turmoil, and a harrowing examination of ethical and moral responsibility in a dangerously interconnected digital world.
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A literary tour de force...a riveting new novel about one of the most urgent crisis of our time....Engrossing and provocative, combining sharp plot twists with Juska's award-winning, trademark literary sophistication, If We Had Known is at once an unforgettable mother-daughter journey, an exquisite portrait of a community in turmoil, and a harrowing examination of ethical and moral responsibility in a dangerously interconnected digital world.
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About Elise Juska
Elise Juska is a writer of novels,
nonfiction, and short fiction that has appeared in numerous publications
including Ploughshares, The Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review, American
Literary Review, Salmagundi, Black Warrior Review, The Seattle Review, Colorado
Review, The Carolina Quarterly and The Hudson Review. Her story
"The Way I Saw The World Then" was published in The Missouri
Review and cited as distinguished by The Best American Stories.
Elise
earned her Master’s in Fiction Writing at the University of New Hampshire,
where she received the Tom Williams Memorial for fiction writing and the
Charait Award for best short story. She has since taught fiction writing at The
New School in NYC, in the MFA program at the University of New Hampshire, and
at various summer writing conferences.
Elise
now spends summers writing on an island in Maine and the rest of the year
teaching in Philadelphia, where she directs the undergraduate Creative Writing
Program at the University of the Arts.