KILLING TIME
At age fifteen, Regina Irene Patterson spent a year in the Northern Arizona town of Harden, where her anthropologist father had taken his family on sabbatical to study Hopi ritual and dance. There, Reggie encountered a way of life that put in sharp contrast and question all she had previously been taught to believe and value. And there she met Casey Colter, a love she meant to leave behind but never did. At age thirty-five, Reggie is finding her privileged Boston Brahmin life superficial and empty. She feels she is locked in the rooms of a blueprint designed by others. She hankers back to her year in Harden. Her increasingly morose, reclusive, and rebellious behavior is upsetting her parents Maggie and Arthur, confusing her daughters Katelyn and Lindsay, and jeopardizing the career of her corporate lawyer husband Howie. Advised by her grandmother Abbie, the family matriarch and Reggie's closest friend and confidante, Reggie returns to Harden, to find the girl she was and the woman she wanted to be--and hopefully to confront her ghosts and finally lay them to rest.
There is something here for everyone: Drama, humor, love, sex, mystery, murder. And woven throughout, the soul of the novel, The Hopi Way of Life.
Ultimately, Killing Time is about love, loss, reconciliation, and hope.
Cover illustration by the author.