ALL IS BEAUTY NOW

Rio de Janeiro, 1963. The eldest daughter of a family descended from American Confederates vanishes without a trace, but did she drown or stage her own death? And can the family survive the truth of solving the mystery? From a breathtakingly mature new voice comes an exquisite debut novel of family secrets, divided loyalties, and what we're willing to do to save ourselves.

This mesmerizing first novel follows a glamorous and long-privileged family as they prepare to leave the seeming paradise of Brazil for Canada in the wake of the mysterious disappearance – and presumed drowning – of their eldest daughter a year earlier. As the novel moves back and forth between the members of the Maurer family, we are not only immersed in a unique time and place, but also gradually taken into the heart of a family whose beauty and charm belie a more troubled reality.

We meet the family's brilliant and charismatic father, whose bipolar extremes are becoming increasingly disturbing; his long-suffering wife, who once had a brief affair that proves to have shattering consequences for the family she swore to protect; their two remaining daughters, both on the brink of understanding the darker currents that run in their once-proud family; and the lost daughter herself, a beautiful young woman undone by her own grand delusions.

With settings ranging from the golden beaches of Rio to the squalor of its fishing villages, from the glamour of the legendary Copacabana Club to the austerity of a remote convent, this revelatory novel takes us into the soul of a family already living in the shadow of loss and now poised to leave behind everything they've ever known, if only they could make peace with the past.

Sarah Faber received an MA in Creative Writing and English Literature from Concordia University. Her writing has appeared in Matrix and Brick, and has been short-listed for The Malahat Review Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction. Sarah grew up in Toronto and now lives on Cape Breton Island with her husband and their two young children. This is her first novel.