Constance Adler's novel Sight Unseen follows three innocents in New Orleans: Claire, a photographer; her husband Simon, who runs a plant nursery; and their dog Hank, the middleman. In their new home, Claire seeks solace from her own bleak childhood and feeds her hungry eyes on the gorgeous green life, rising from this strange city, while Simon digs into the rich alluvial soil, coaxing young shoots from the mud. The story opens in May 1995, on the night of a terrific flood, a "rain event" that sets their home afloat. So many plans, so much water. Amidst this ruin, the couple also grapples with conflicting desires around parenthood. In their foundering attempts to have a child, their marriage is tested by the deeper desolation exposed in the fallout from this immense loss. By the next hurricane threat six months later, Claire and Simon must learn how to survive, literally and figuratively, together or apart. As Claire reaches new ground in her work as a photographer, she sharpens her ability to see herself, her husband, and world they made with greater honesty, and fashions a life raft from the wreckage of her mistakes.
Constance Adler is the author of the memoir My Bayou, New Orleans Through the Eyes of a Lover (Michigan State University Press) and her stories have appeared in Oxford American, Utne Reader, Garden & Gun Magazine, River Teeth Journal, Blackbird, and Peauxdunque Review, among others. A graduate of Smith College, she holds an MA in Creative Writing from Hollins University. Adler makes her home near Bayou Saint John in New Orleans with her patient husband Geoff and two unruly dogs, Jack and Winnie.
"Constance Adler's arresting debut novel traces the thin line between reality and the hazy terrain of assumption, desire, and remorse. In New Orleans, a city of bloom and rot, two lovers dig into the wreckage of their own worst instincts, with profound results. This is a book of visions, about how we anchor the body and trust the unspoken. Tenderly written, Sight Unseen is a hymn to the visceral world." — Katy Simpson Smith, author of The Story of Land and Sea, Free Men, and The Everlasting
"Like the constant storms that threaten and assault this novel's sharply rendered setting, New Orleans, Constance Adler's seductively powerful Sight Unseen gathers intensity as the tumult of personal loss builds into a raging exploration of one woman's history. With stunning detail and a quiet ferocity, Adler scours an emotional lineage rife with endurance, fury, magic, and, ultimately, reclamation." — Adrianne Harun, author of The King of Limbo, Catch and A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain
"Sight Unseen is spellbinding. A luminous map of pain, night vision, and healing, Constance Adler has reimagined the ghost story as a profound ode to the animal self, the bonds that sustain us, and the sacred scars of loss and a life fully, wildly lived. Mesmerizing." — Margot Douaihy, author of Scorched Grace, Blessed Water and Scranton Lace
