For Grace Bonner, the bond of sisterhood is an exquisite, painful thing. In The Book of Atlantis Black, Bonner unravels the mystery of her sister and what happened in the final months before her disappearance, alleged overdose, and death.
With access to Atlantis’s email and social media accounts, Bonner attempts to decipher and construct a narrative around the circumstances surrounding her probable death: Frantic and unintelligible notes on Facebook, alarming images of Atlantis with a handgun tucked in the waistband of her pants, Craigslist companionship ads, DEA agent testimony, video surveillance, police reports, and various phone calls and moments-in-the-flesh conjured from memory.
Through the construction and deconstruction of these materials and the history only she and Atlantis shared, Bonner finds questions that lead to only more questions, red flags that point in no particular direction, leaving her to decide how far she will go to understand a sister who, like the mythical island she renamed herself for, might prove impossible to find.
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“A haunting, profound investigative memoir that will resonate with readers as both a compelling true crime story and an affecting literary work. Bonner creates a sense of closeness with readers that makes this book a challenge to put down or forget.”
— Library Journal (starred review)
“[A] piercing true crime investigation…The Book of Atlantis Black assumes the qualities of the departed musician herself: marked by yearning, it revolves around absences and is irresistible to the end.”
— Foreword Reviews“Betsy Bonner has crafted a terse, urgent page-turner that is equally ode, elegy, and mystery.”
— Chelsey Johnson, author of Stray City“This memoir is as haunting, as memorable, and as magnetic as the tragic young woman at its core. I tore through it at lightning speed but I also didn’t want it to end.”
— Amanda Fortini, freelance journalist“Carefully crafted, haunting, and absorbing, this thrilling memoir echoes in the head and heart long after the final page.”
— Kirkus Reviews“Fascinating and maddening…The reader is made to feel what it’s like to be denied answers in an essential search.”
— Amy Hempel, author of The Collected Works of Amy Hempel“In mournful, meticulous―and sometimes wryly funny―prose, The Book of Atlantis Black gives us an unforgettable portrait of an impossible yet compelling young woman taken down by her own demons, and fighting every step of the way.”
— David Gates, songwriter and co-lead singer of the musical group Bread“This lyrical and compelling memoir shows how Atlantis changed both Bonner’s life and the lives of others with her raw talent and electric presence.”
— BooklistBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Grace Bonner is the author of Round Lake, a poetry collection published by Four Way Books. She is a faculty member of the Writer’s Foundry MFA program at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, New York, and the former Director of the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center, where she teaches an annual poetry seminar. Her work has appeared in The New Republic, The Paris Review, Parnassus, Poetry Daily, The Brooklyn Quarterly and The Southampton Review. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. She is a fellow of the MacDowell Colony, Eliot House and the VCCA, and a mentor in PEN’s Prison Writing Program.
Laura Jennings graduated with an MFA in creative writing and has an intrinsic appreciation of the mechanisms and techniques which comprise the art of the tale. A skilled narrator, she is adept at analyzing the underlying moods and currents of a book and bringing these into her interpretation of the author’s work.