Dead Letters

Résumé

Ava Antipova has her reasons for running away: a failing family vineyard, a romantic betrayal, a mercurial sister, an absent father, a mother slipping into dementia. In Paris, Ava renounces her terribly practical undergraduate degree, acquires a French boyfriend and a taste for much better wine, and erases her past. Two years later, she must return to upstate New York.

Her twin sister Zelda, is dead.

Even in a family of alcoholics, Zelda Antipode was the wild one, notorious for her mind games and destructive behaviour. Stuck tending the vineyard and the girl's increasingly unstable mother, Zelda was allegedly burned alive when she passed out in the barn with a lit cigarette. But Ava finds the official explanation a little too neat. A little too Zelda. Then she receives a cryptic message-- from her sister.

Just as Ava suspected, Zelda's playing one her games. In fact, she's outdone herself, leaving a series of clues about her disappearance. With the police stuck on a red herring. Ava follows the trail laid just for her, thinking like her sister, keeping her secrets, immersing herself in Zelda's drama and her outlandish circle of friends and lovers. Along the way, Zelda forces her twin to confront their twisted history and the boy who broke Ava's heart. But why? Is Zelda trying to punish Ava for leaving, or to teach her a lesson? Or is she simply trying to write her own ending?