Sarah Kernochan, Oscar winning filmmaker and screenwriter of such memorable films as Nine and ½ Weeks, Impromptu, Sommersby, What Lies Beneath returns with her first novel in nearly 35 years, Jane Was Here. With powerfully cinematic imagery and a plot which combines reincarnation, karma and paranormal, Jane Was Here is a book that reads like the best thriller you haven't seen, and brings up the questions of sexuality, identity and the power struggles between men and women that have resonated in her film work.
The underlying theme of the book: how past history (whether real or imagined) impacts on the present day:
A young woman arrives in the small rundown community of Graynier, Massachusetts. She calls herself Jane, though she was christened by another name. She can point out the house where she grew up, though she has never been to Graynier in her life. Jane carries with her the fragmentary memory of her former life, and refuses to adjust to her new identity. Thus begins Jane's mission, to retrieve the puzzle pieces of a former life, groping her way through the past and the present simultaneously.
The inhabitants of Graynier are unwittingly drawn into the mystery, as it becomes clear: someone must pay in the present for past evils. Someone must pay for a murder committed 150 years ago. Will it be the reincarnated killer?
Genre: Horror
The underlying theme of the book: how past history (whether real or imagined) impacts on the present day:
A young woman arrives in the small rundown community of Graynier, Massachusetts. She calls herself Jane, though she was christened by another name. She can point out the house where she grew up, though she has never been to Graynier in her life. Jane carries with her the fragmentary memory of her former life, and refuses to adjust to her new identity. Thus begins Jane's mission, to retrieve the puzzle pieces of a former life, groping her way through the past and the present simultaneously.
The inhabitants of Graynier are unwittingly drawn into the mystery, as it becomes clear: someone must pay in the present for past evils. Someone must pay for a murder committed 150 years ago. Will it be the reincarnated killer?
Genre: Horror
Praise for this book
"An eerie story that not only kept me guessing but kept me up at night. Sarah Kernochan delivers a quirky tale with the perfect amount of creepiness, intrigue, and small town New England politics. A perfect choice for book clubs." - Brunonia Barry
"SARAH KERNOCHAN’S ghost thriller is written with a sly knowing and takes you on a compelling ride through at least four dimensions. She expertly binds together seemingly irreconcilable elements: urban relationship distress, 19th century utopian dreams , gritty sexual realities of 21st century rural poverty, reincarnation, and fate. The book holds you tight in the grip of one question all the way to the final, chilling answer. Jane Was Here is not a Whodunit but the first Whoisit?" - Joan Juliet Buck
"Sarah Kernochan's second novel, Jane Was Here, has an insane premise -- that the presence of one young woman can literally cause the past and the future to collide in real time and space. How Kernochan, the writer of the film 'What Lies Beneath,' pulls it off, and she does, is nothing short of magic. See Jane break the world wide open." - Jacquelyn Mitchard
"Sarah Kernochan's profoundly modern story of the vengeful reincarnation of a young 19th New England woman is sly, terrifying, witty, perverse, seductive and thoroughly satisfying." - Rafael Yglesias
"SARAH KERNOCHAN’S ghost thriller is written with a sly knowing and takes you on a compelling ride through at least four dimensions. She expertly binds together seemingly irreconcilable elements: urban relationship distress, 19th century utopian dreams , gritty sexual realities of 21st century rural poverty, reincarnation, and fate. The book holds you tight in the grip of one question all the way to the final, chilling answer. Jane Was Here is not a Whodunit but the first Whoisit?" - Joan Juliet Buck
"Sarah Kernochan's second novel, Jane Was Here, has an insane premise -- that the presence of one young woman can literally cause the past and the future to collide in real time and space. How Kernochan, the writer of the film 'What Lies Beneath,' pulls it off, and she does, is nothing short of magic. See Jane break the world wide open." - Jacquelyn Mitchard
"Sarah Kernochan's profoundly modern story of the vengeful reincarnation of a young 19th New England woman is sly, terrifying, witty, perverse, seductive and thoroughly satisfying." - Rafael Yglesias
Used availability for Sarah Kernochan's Jane Was Here