Tether - Sarah Jollien-Fardel

Rose wakes each morning trapped in a wood-paneled room. Tethered.

Her life changed forever three years earlier, when the police arrived at her door with devastating news: her beloved daughter, Anna, was dead. Since then, Rose has lived in the past, replaying the events that led to the tragedy and searching for the moment when everything began to unravel.

As her memories unfold, we see the life she once shared with her husband. They bonded over books and long walks through the rugged yet welcoming Alpine valley she calls home. They reunited later as students in Lausanne, married, built careers, and welcomed Anna into their lives. Rose describes what seemed like a quiet, contented existence, even as she probes for hidden fractures and tries to understand the madness that brought her to this room and these restraints.

Then one day, Rose hears a voice beyond the door. A woman is reading to her. For the first time, there is a suggestion that she may not be entirely alone, and that a path out of the darkness might still exist.

Tether is a powerful novel about contained violence and its aftermath, a piercing portrait of womanhood and motherhood, and a deeply moving exploration of how love can carry us to unimaginable extremes.