The Raising

death. In Godwin Honors Hall, the walls are draped in black. The college is in mourning for Nicole Werner, a blonde and beautiful prom queen who died in a car crash last semester. She was a prized member of the Virgin Sisters, the most powerful sorority on campus.obsession.Nicole's boyfriend Craig was at the wheel that night. He has no memory of the crash, but he is plagued by guilt. For as winter sets in and the nights darken, Nicole's death dominates college life - and then the hauntings begin.suspicion.Craig's roommate, Perry, doesn't believe in ghosts. He always thought Nicole was as manipulative as she was charming, and refuses to be swept up in the hysteria. But when he and his fellow sceptics join forces, he too sees Nicole's spirit in the crumbling college halls...

From Publishers Weekly

Kasischke (In a Perfect World) delivers a satisfying if predictable campus novel that's both gothic romance and coming-of-age tale. A year after sorority girl Nicole Werner died in a car accident, Nicole's boyfriend, Craig Clements-Rabbitt, who was driving, is trying to put his life together. When snobbish sophisticate Craig had arrived from New Hampshire at Godwin Honors Hall—a selective college within a huge Midwestern university—he soon got on the nerves of his more down-to-earth roommate, Perry Edwards, and Perry's childhood schoolmate, the beautiful Nicole. Now, Craig is a sober soul, but Nicole's former sorority sisters are unwilling to let her "murderer" be. Meanwhile, Shelly Lockes, the first witness at the accident scene, is hounded out of town, and Mira Polson, a professor of anthropology who looks too closely at Nicole's death, is forced to resign. Students commit suicide or are "accidentally" shot dead. If the narrative is convoluted, so is the diabolical, if improbable, scheme hatched by the sisters of Omega Theta Tau. Big Sister, apparently, watches over us all. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Set in and around the campus of a fictional midwestern university, Kasischke’s eighth novel centers on a tragic car accident that has taken the life of beautiful, straight-A student Nicole. A year later, her sorority sisters are still up in arms and lay the blame for Nicole’s death on her boyfriend, Craig, who, they claim, is an irresponsible rich kid. But Craig’s roommate, Philip, who grew up with Nicole, has begun to think that she is not really dead and approaches his sociology professor, who is teaching a class on death, for help. Meanwhile, a witness to the accident has given up trying to straighten out the many erroneous newspaper accounts stating that Nicole was found covered in blood, for the girl she saw was not bleeding and not dead. Kasischke excels at depicting the psychology of the young and the traumatized even as she delivers a scathing indictment of the siege mentality of college administrators. In this literary page-turner, reminiscent of Donna Tartt’s Secret History (1992), the talented author inlays her academic novel with a touch of the supernatural and a deep sense of foreboding. --Joanne Wilkinson

From the Back Cover

Last year Godwin Honors Hall was draped in black. The university was mourningthe loss of one of its own: Nicole Werner, a blond, beautiful, straight-A sororitysister tragically killed in a car accident that left her boyfriend, who was driving,remarkably—some say suspiciously—unscathed. Although a year has passed, as winter begins and the nights darken, obsession withNicole and her death reignites: She was so pretty. So sweet-tempered. So innocent. Tooyoung to die.Unless she didn’t.Because rumor has it that she’s back.

About the Author

Renee Raudman is an actor and multi-award-winning audiobook narrator. She has performed on film, television, radio, and on stage and can also be heard in several video games and hundreds of television and radio voice-overs.Laura Kasischke is the author of a number of novels and collections of poetry. Her numerous awards include the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America and the Bobst Award for Emerging Writers. She lives in Chelsea, Michigan.

Reviews

News