Caitlin Mullen

Type

Text

Type

Thesis

Advisor

Advisors: Scarf Merrell, Susan; Minot, Susan; Cheshire, Scott

Date

2017-12-01

Keywords

Creative writing

Department

Department of Creative Writing and Literature | Thesis

Language

en

Source

This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.

Identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/11401/78312

Publisher

The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.

Format

application/pdf

Abstract

“Please See” is a work of literary fiction and is partially based on a cold case from 2007, when the bodies of four prostitutes were found in a drainage easement in the salt marsh behind an Atlantic City motel. I’ve set the novel over the course of one summer in Atlantic City in 2016, when the city is in the throes of a deep recession, still struggling to recover from the damage wrought by Storm Sandy, and dealing with the constant devastation brought on by the influx of heroin in town. The book reimagines the murders through the eyes of a rotating cast of characters: Luis, a deaf-mute immigrant from Haiti, Clara, a high school dropout turned boardwalk psychic, and Lily, a former art gallery assistant who has recently moved back home from New York to recover from a personal and professional humiliation. All of these characters will be profoundly affected by the discovery of the bodies: Luis, who has taken to prowling town for salvage and scrap metal, is the one to find them in the marsh and struggles over how to communicate what he’s seen without implicating himself in the crime. Clara finds herself vulnerable to a violent client who may have had something to do with the killings, and Lily is the only one to know about the danger that Clara is in. In addition to navigating the various threats that loom over the city, Luis grapples with his guilt over an act of violence he committed before he came to America, Lily struggles to solve a mystery surrounding a trove of WWII-era paintings she uncovers at her neighbor’s home, and Clara discovers a brutal secret about the mother who left her when she was an infant and the aunt who raised her. | 368 pages

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