Best friends Bettina, Miriam, and Fiona are shocked when their dean of liberal studies dies in a single-car accident amid accusations of mishandling university funds. They suspect murder, especially after learning that the dean’s estranged wife will inherit three million dollars. Events take a surprising turn when they travel from Austin, Texas, to a Chautauqua performance in Silver City, New Mexico, where they join several others, some with questionable motives, including the dean’s wife and her lover. In the close confines of the lodge, the group brings to life remarkable women from history—including Victoria Woodhull, Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and Virginia Woolf. But when one woman is kidnapped and another disappears, the friends’ lives are forever changed as they realize that the masks we wear often hide chilling truths.
Reviews:
“Set mostly in an approximation of Silver City’s Bear Mountain Lodge, Lynn C. Miller’s The Unmasking: A Novel (UNM Press) mixes a murder mystery with literary analyses of Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, and Mabel Dodge Luhan. There’s even an old-school comedy of manners as the primary players move among the rooms of the Oso Grande Lodge in search of both a killer and ways to burnish their higher-ed reputations. Miller deftly skewers the follies of academic life while tending a cauldron of tension that eventually reveals the truth behind key characters’ masks. Bonus for avid readers: new insights into classic writers.”—New Mexico Magazine, December 2021
“A deftly crafted novel by an author with a genuine flair for originality and a distinctively riveting narrative storytelling style, The Unmasking by author Lynn C. Miller is extraordinary, memorable, timely and timeless.”—Midwest Book Review, November 2020
“A literary look into the dynamics of female friendships and acquaintances in academia and the baggage, wreckage, and intimacy that invariably infiltrate these relationships over the years. This tale is a combination of cozy mystery and literary fiction, with the added twist of ladies portraying strong female authors of classic literature, such as Edith Wharton and Gertrude Stein.” —Lone Star Review, November 2020
“The Unmasking, falls squarely within the academic mystery sub-genre. . . . Miller has written a fine novel. The conversations were witty, which is so much a part of academic mysteries. . . . The author took risks with the plot and gave readers the respect they deserve. I see that she’s written a couple of other academic mysteries and I’ll be happily looking for them. It’s my favorite sub-genre of them all and now I know another very good practitioner of it.” —Lambda Literary [reviewed by Anne Laughlin]
“Smart, irreverent, and wickedly tender. Miller displays an unerring eye for contemporary American foibles, inside and outside academic life, using a classic murder mystery to expose the truth to her characters and the reader. Not for a minute does The Unmasking lose its perfect pitch or its pacing. Don’t skip a page, don’t skip a paragraph—it will all be covered on the final exam.”—Jesse Lee Kercheval, author of My Life as a Silent Movie: A Novel
“This is a novel that will captivate you on many levels: an intriguing mystery in which lives are at stake, the story of a group of wonderfully devoted friends, and a study of the difficulties in deciphering our own and other people’s realities. A book to savor and return to.”—Kathleen Hill, author of She Read to Us in the Late Afternoons: A Life in Novels
“Lynn Miller offers a great cast of characters: a group of scholars caught up in a murder case that calls upon their insights into the mystery novels they study. Miller expertly toys with reader expectations and offers sharp, amusing jabs along the way—all the while celebrating revolutionary women writers and the much-beloved books they wrote.”—Timothy Schaffert, author of The Swan Gondola: A Novel
“Lynn C. Miller knows women—their wit, intelligence, humor, and sexuality. Published in the year of the hundredth anniversary of US women winning the right to vote, The Unmasking is a testament to women’s creativity and sisterhood.”—Bev Magennis, author of Alibi Creek
“In a witty homage to the locked-room mystery, The Unmasking isolates a group of feminist scholars at a resort in New Mexico. They are there to perform as remarkable women from history such as Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and Edith Wharton, when the performance festival takes a compellingly sinister turn.”—John Anderson, Chautauqua scholar/performer
