Hangsaman
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Shirley Jackson's chilling second novel, based on her own experiences and an actual mysterious disappearance
Seventeen-year-old Natalie Waite longs to escape home for college. Her father is a domineering and egotistical writer who keeps a tight rein on Natalie and her long-suffering mother. When Natalie finally does get away, however, college life doesn’t bring the happiness she expected. Little by little, Natalie is no longer certain of anything—even where reality ends and her dark imaginings begin. Chilling and suspenseful, Hangsaman is loosely based on the real-life disappearance of a Bennington College sophomore in 1946.
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Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson was an American author who is best known for the short story “The Lottery” and the horror novel The Haunting of Hill House. Married to the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, Jackson cultivated a literary lifestyle, writing full time and developing relationships with literary colleagues. A gifted writer, Jackson frequently took inspiration from the events and locales of rural Vermont, where she and her family resided, and from the exploits of her children, which were chronicled in Life Among the Savages. Jackson died of heart failure in 1965.
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