Basil Everman

On the day her son graduates from college, Mrs. Lister is haunted by the ghost of her brother. Basil Everman was a writer of dazzling promise, a man whose talent burned so bright it consumed him. He left behind not published masterpieces but wreckage: a sister who loved him, a reputation that calcified into myth, and pages of unpublished work scattered like ashes. A stranger arrives in Waltonville. Evan Utterly wants something from the dead man. He wants the manuscripts, the letters, the truth of what Basil Everman actually wrote. What he finds instead is a community still reeling from the blast radius of one man's brilliance. Mrs. Lister must decide what she owes the brother who made her proud and ashamed in equal measure. Singmaster writes with quiet devastation about the stories families tell themselves. This is a novel about how we remember the brilliant among us, and the price of living in the shadow of potential never realized.