Carry Yourself Back to Me: A Novel - Softcover

“A beautifully written, thoroughly engaging novel. Deborah Reed’s prose is lyrical, elegant, and vivid—she is a standout among new American novelists.”—Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties and Drinking Closer to Home

Famed alt-country artist Annie Walsh has more than enough reason to sing her version of the blues, including a broken heart, a stalled career, and a troubled family. Annie seeks refuge from an upended love affair with her producer, Owen Pettybone, by sequestering herself at home with her old dog Detour, surrounded by a lush Florida tangelo grove. Soon, however, this quiet, small-town existence—far from recording studios, ardent fans, and affairs of the heart—comes crashing down around her. A violent murder connected to her brother Calder threatens to tear her family apart and forces Annie to shore up her loyalties and uproot profound disappointments from her distant past. Like a fine and forlorn love ballad, the gifted, conflicted Annie lulls the reader into a journey through love and loss that mines the mysterious, and, at times, paradoxical rhythms of the human heart.

“Deborah Reed has written here a novel peopled with real, flesh-and-bone characters—men and women both as good and delightfully flawed as our best friends, our spouses, ourselves. And the icing on this cake is Reed’s lucid, lovely prose.”—Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum, author of This Life She’s Chosen and Swimming with Strangers