Lauren Groff

The day I returned to Templeton, steeped in disgrace, the fifty-foot corpse of a monster surfaced in Lake Glimmerglassao So begins this spellbinding debut novel: part a contemporary story of a girl's search for her father, part historical novel, and part ghost story, at its core it is a story of how one town holds the secrets of a family. In The Monsters of Templeton, Lauren Groff blazes onto the scene with a work that is a combination of brilliant storytelling, inventive writing, and huge vision. Temperamental but lovable Willie (nee Wilhelmina) Cooper arrives on the doorstep of her ancestral home in Templeton, NY where her hippie-turned-born-again Christian mom, Vi, still lives in the wake of a disastrous affair with her much older, married archaeology professor. That same day, the discovery of a prehistoric monster in the lake brings a feeding frenzy to the quiet, picture-perfect town her ancestors founded. Smarting from a broken heart, Willie then learns that the story her mother had always told her about her father has all been a lie. He wasn't the one-night stand Vi had led her to imagine, but someone else entirely. Someone from this very town. As Willie puts her archaeological skills to work digging for the truth about her lineage, a chorus of voices from the town's past both sinister and disturbing rise up around her to tell their sides of the story. Willie discovers the curse of the Temple family runs deep, and even her beloved town is no longer a respite from her own demons. In the end, dark secrets come to light, past and present blur, old mysteries are finally put to rest, and the surprising truth about more than one monster is revealed.

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