Starling Lawrence's The Thief of Words tells an old story, one summed up neatly by its protagonist: "A man falls down the rabbit hole in pursuit of a woman little more than half his age," says Owen, a writer in New York.
When Owen falls in love with Nora, his publisher's young editor, he tumbles into a world darker and more brutal than even his detached writerly common sense bargained for. Hurt by Nora's ultimate rejection, he strikes back by writing a book exposing her tumultuous past.
Lawrence, former editor-in-chief at W.W. Norton (and current editor-at-large), knows much about writers. He also seems to know a good deal about well-educated, naïve young women. Nora, fresh out of Brown, joins "Hands Across the Sea" to do missionary work in Sierra Leone. She and the other young Americans in her group are thrown together with a group of displaced black South Africans. Despite the watchful oversight of the mission's leader, Nora becomes attached first to her attractive, abused refugee bunkmate, Aurelia, and then to Aurelia's spurned boyfriend, Morlai. On a side trip to Morlai's home village, Nora's romantic infatuation bounces up against reality when they are accosted and humiliated by brutal diamond smugglers.
Lawrence gradually explains Nora's hurtful rebuff of Owen and his subsequent revenge through seamless shifts between Owen's first-person narration and Nora's revealing Sierra Leone diaries. In her last entry, a resolute Nora sets the course that will be Owen's undoing: "She would do the things she must do, she would heal, and she would think no more about the riddle of love."
The Thief of Words is a fresh, satisfying take on an old story. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.