Book description
Late in her life, acclaimed novelist Elizabeth Delamere makes a
request of her therapist, Doctor Newman: she asks him to oversee the
publication of her last book after she dies. It is a memoir in which
she reveals that she is Evelyn Dick, the notorious "torso
murderer" acquitted on appeal of dismembering her husband, and
convicted of killing her infant son. In 1958 she was paroled, and
disappeared into the mists of history.
In Blue Moon, James King draws on the historical case of
Evelyn Dick, and imagines her life after her release from prison. It
is a life in which she travels to Vancouver, renames herself, and
settles into a position as sales clerk at Duthie Books on Robson.
There she meets Ethel Wilson, begins therapy, and tries to understand
the events that led to her imprisonment and current life. She also
begins to write, and finds herself a successfully published author.
But did she murder her husband? Is she guilty of neglect of her baby
boy? Was her life as Hamilton's most notorious prostitute her
responsibility? With the help of Doctor Newman, she attempts to come
to understand the violence in which she was involved, her sense of
guilt, and the essential truth of her innocence.
James King's most recent book is the bestselling biography of
Margaret Laurence. He has received numerous awards, including a
Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and a Killam Research Fellowship. He is
the author of a biography of Herbert Read, The Last Modern: A Life
of Herbert Read (1991), which was nominated for the Governor
General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction; and the critically acclaimed
The Life of Margaret Laurence (1997).
