Faye, Faraway

Product Description
Heartfelt and irresistible—“a lovely, deeply moving story of loss and love and memory made real” (Diana Gabaldon, #1 New York Times bestselling author)—this enchanting debut follows a woman who travels back in time to be reunited with the mother she lost when she was a child.
Every night, as Faye puts her daughters to bed, she thinks of her own mother, Jeanie, who died when Faye was eight. The pain of that loss has never left her, and that’s why she wants her own girls to know how very much they are loved by her—and always will be, whatever happens.
Then one day, Faye gets her heart’s desire when she’s whisked back into the past and is reunited not just with her mother but with her own younger self.
Jeanie doesn’t recognize grown-up Faye as her daughter, even though there is something eerily familiar about her. But the two women become close friends and share all kinds of secrets—except for the deepest secret of all, the secret of who Faye really is. Faye worries that telling the truth may prevent her from being able to return to the present day, to her dear husband and beloved daughters. Eventually she’ll have to choose between those she loved in the past and those she loves in the here and now, and that knowledge presents her with an impossible choice.
If only she didn’t have to make it....
About the Author
Helen Fisher spent her early life in America but grew up mainly in Suffolk, England, where she now lives with her two children. She studied psychology at Westminster University and ergonomics at University College London, and worked as a senior evaluator in research at the Royal National Institute of Blind People.
Faye, Faraway is her first novel.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
The loss of my mother is like a missing tooth: an absence I can feel at all times, but one I can hide as long as I keep my mouth shut. And so I rarely talk about her.
It’s a sad place to start my incredible little story, but please don’t misunderstand me: I love my life. I’m quite an ordinary thirtysomething woman with two daughters and a husband, Eddie, who’s training to be in the clergy. He seems to think I’ll make the perfect vicar’s wife, but I’m not sure I’m up to the challenge. Compared to my husband I’m what you might call more rational, a little more scientific. But I suppose, after what I’ve been through, I should be able to believe in anything.
Eddie says I have all the necessary qualities, and I admit I think I’m a good person. For instance, you can tell me anything and I won’t judge, and if I can’t help raising an eyebrow, it will stay on the inside, to protect your feelings. And I’ve always been completely truthful with Eddie, it’s a thing between us, not a single lie. Until now.
Now I’m a liar. Now I’m a thief.
And I can no longer say hand-on-heart that I’m even normal. I’ll let you make up your own mind. Lying to my husband makes me feel sick and I’m desperate to stop, but lies are like toes: where there’s one, there’s always more close by. My biggest confession is that I’ve been visiting my mother and lying about that, but I’ve also been scratched and scarred and lied about that too, so many things. If I told him the truth, Eddie would try to understand because he’s a good man. But logically—
logically—he’s more likely to think I’m mad.
Maybe I’m being unfair to him, because as much as I love and need my husband, he loves and needs me, and over the past few months I’ve realized something important. I can’t tell Eddie what’s been happening, no matter how much I want to. Not because he won’t believe me, but because he might.
And if Eddie believes me, he’ll try to stop me.
LET ME EXPLAIN things from the beginning, although I wonder where the beginning really is. Time is not as easy to understand as I once thought.
It started with the photo and the box—but, oh, there’s me saying “started,” and that’s the same as beginning. We’ll mak