The Object: a love story

The Object:  a love story is the tale of Sandra Briar’s life, as told by nearly fifty different characters. 

Wherever  she travels in the world – a journey from teenage runaway to promising artist, from disaster victim to depression survivor, from defiant  daughter to reflective grandmother – we always know her as the object of someone else’s story.  

Sandra's brother, who calls her “Sandy,”  tells his version of their flight to the beach; a screenwriter fictionalizes her as “Sharon Long” in a based-on-a-true-story movie; she is the “Assistant” to a jaded professional photographer who guides her through the great cities of the world; a mother bitterly recounts how this cursed “Suka” betrayed her son; a starving cookbook writer helplessly watches his “Poor Boy Bonanza” be absorbed into New York’s glittering nightlife; her children’s book “Ma Rabbit and the Big Rain” is read aloud on a stormy night to a little girl.

These stories overlap to become the patchwork quilt that is her portrait.  Neither her mother’s perspective, or her rival’s point-of-view, or her own voice, or even the tale created by some writer, possess the whole truth.  

This novel is a reading experience of constant reevaluation, conflicted empathy and personal reflection on the question, “What is my true life story?”