Genius

Kara Bell spent her youth plotting escape from Witchs Falls, Arkansas. Relentless focus and the spurning of all emotional attachment led to the doctoral program in philosophy at Columbia University. But Karas careful plans are upended by cancer, and suddenly she is home again, where she finds herself subject to her mothers suffocating care, her brothers puzzling love life, the local doctors meddling, and the strong gravitational pull of her old friend and obsession, Christy Lee. Will Kara find health and sanity? Will she learn what really happened to her father? Can she escape Witchs Falls a second time, or will she succumb to the slow poison of local kindness and Snickers Salad? In Genius, Thomas Rayfiel finds both poignancy and dark humor in deathly illness, family secrets, organized religion, parenting, abortion, gossip, senility, and the mysterious rhythms of small-town life.