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Fritz Agency
Christian Dittus
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English

THE BOOK OF ATLANTIS BLACK

Grace Bonner

A Memoir

Spare and elegant, relentless and gripping, The Book of Atlantis Black is an absorbing, psychological mystery and proof of sisterly dedication, obsession and love.

Grace Bonner had a sister with certain powers: to charm, confound, inspire, infuriate. Grace, the younger sister by two years, would never be the wild sister, the fucked-up sister, the one who named herself after a fictional island for Grace to return to over and over. Nancy Bonner became Atlantis Black because she knew she was born a myth.

In The Book of Atlantis Black, Grace ravels and unravels and re-ravels the mystery of her sister and what happened in the final months before her disappearance and alleged overdose and death. Armed with access to all of Atlantis' email and social media accounts, Grace attempts to decipher and construct a narrative around the circumstances surrounding her plausible death: frantic and unintelligible notes on Facebook, alarming images of Atlantis with a handgun tucked in the waistband of her pants, Craigslist “companionship” ads, DEA agent testimony, video surveillance, art film/faux-snuff footage, police reports, and various phone calls and moments-in-the-flesh conjured from memory. Through the construction and deconstruction of these materials and the history only she and Atlantis shared, Grace attempts to understand if her sister's desperation to leave the country and an increasingly dire situation behind proved fruitful or if she died alone in a Mexican motel room wearing a brown “Good Karma” T-shirt.

What Grace finds is a provocative contradiction—just as her sister proved in life—questions that lead nowhere or to only more questions, red flags that point in no particular direction, leaving Grace to decide how far she will go to understand a sister she refers to as her “canary, ahead of me in the dark.”

Grace Bonner is the MFA Program Director of the Writer's Foundry and a Lecturer at St. Joseph's College. She is a former Director of the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center, where she now teaches poetry. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems have appeared in The New Republic, The Paris Review, Parnassus, Poetry Daily, The Southampton Review and in other publications. Excerpts from her memoir, The Book of Atlantis Black, have been published in The Brooklyn Quarterly.
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Published by Tin House Books

Comments

“Betsy Bonner explores her sister's unsettling life and death with laser-sharp prose in The Book of Atlantis Black: The Search for a Sister Gone Missing Part exorcism and part adoring tribute, The Book of Atlantis Black is deeply haunting and darkly fascinating.”

"Her manic, self-destructive sister wanted to be famous, but it took Grace Bonner's literary gifts to make her a rock star on the page. In mournful, meticulous—and sometimes wryly funny—prose, The Book of Atlantis Black gives us an unforgettable portrait of an impossible yet compelling young woman taken down by her own demons, and fighting every step of the way." — David Gates, author of A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me and Jernigan

"The detective quality of The Book of Atlantis Black is both fascinating and maddening. The pain is right there, but also restrained so that the reader gets to feel/is made to feel something of what it was like for you and your sister and your mother. It is a stunning achievement...and, of course, riveting." — Amy Hempel, author of Sing to It and Reasons to Live

“Carefully crafted, haunting, and absorbing, this thrilling memoir echoes in the head and heart long after the final page.”

“A haunting, profound investigative memoir that will resonate with readers as both a compelling true crime story and an affecting literary work. Bonner creates a sense of closeness with readers that makes this book a challenge to put down or forget.” (starred review)

“[A] haunting, mind-bending memoir Bonner constructs much of her memoir from Atlantis's emails, Facebook updates, interviews, Craigslist ads, voice mail messages and song lyrics. This collage captures both Atlantis's mesmerizing voice and her instability; the Facebook updates are incantatory, spellbinding.”

“With her debut memoir, Bonner has written a spellbinding page-turner, a true crime hybrid that will satisfy readers who seek out advanced literary stylings along with readers who want a wildly entertaining, suspenseful tale."

“A haunting, heartbreaking, frustrating read Bonner's voice is strong—her pain, research and need for answers the three constants that drive the book.”