ABOUT THE BOOK

Meet Rose Devonic, a wily, ferociously determined twenty-nine-year-old as unorthodox as any young woman in recent fiction. Rose lives in the tiny mountain town of Queduro, New Mexico, where she - like most others - makes her living selling traditional embroidery. But Rose has no home or family. In winter she sleeps in a mostly abandoned motel, and in summer she lives out of her car. A tragedy in her past, which serves as a constant reminder to neighbors of their complicity, has made her an outcast who trusts nothing except her own ability to survive.

One frozen afternoon in October, Rose hitches a ride over the already snow-covered mountain pass and walks the last four miles of the road into her hometown of Queduro. Her monthlong fling with Harmon Waters - yet another disappointment - is over, and once again she must pick up the pieces of her life. But when she arrives at the Ten Tribes Motel, even Birdie, her elderly landlord and best friend, seems dismayed to see her. The motel has closed, he tells her, and his sister, Alice Pinkston, the owner, is coming to sell it. Rose's last refuge is about to disappear.

Remember Me tells the enthralling story of Rose's battle to win the hearts and minds of her lifelong neighbours - or at least a little respect from a town that has treated her with brutal indifference. Along the way, she comes to understand that only by facing down her ghosts will she be able to accept the ultimately liberating challenges of belonging, identity, and love.

Laura Hendrie's story collection Stygo won the Rosenthal Foundation Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Mountains and Plains Regional Booksellers' Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Remember Me is her first novel. She lives in northern New Mexico.