House Arrest

By Mary Morris

Book Overview

Mary Morris, called "a marvelous storyteller" by The Chicago Tribune, returns with House Arrest--a vividly etched, engrossing story of a nation, two remarkable women, and the meaning of freedom.

House Arrest tells the gripping tale of two women from different cultures whose lives intersect at a point that promises freedom to one and disaster to the other. Maggie Conover, a travel writer on assignment in the Caribbean Island nation known only as la isla, is being held under house arrest at her hotel. The authorities are suspicious of her friendship with the island's revolutionary leader's fiery daughter, Isabel Calderon, who has disappeared. As Maggie is interrogated, bullied, and brought to a fever pitch of anxiety, she recalls Isabel's courage, her own troubled past, her longing for home, her daughter and family.

Balancing personal and political intrigue, House Arrest unflinchingly explores meanings of freedom and imprisonment, of parenthood and childhood, and the boundaries of friendship and love.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312155476
• ISBN13: 9780312155476
• Release Date: May 1997
• Publisher: Picador USA
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Playing with fire in a foreign country

For a traveler to a foreign country, part of the intrigue is that you are vulnerable to the laws that do not take your nationality as a priority. The urge to be accommodating and submissive is a response to the insecurity of not having the freedoms and protection expected in one's home country. Some travelers are challenging, some are paranoid and some are just trusting to the point of naivete'. For Maggie Conover, all or none of these responses may apply, at least for her initial visit to "la isla" in the Caribbean. A travel writer for the magazine, Easy Rider, she meets the daughter of the island's rebel leader. Isabel has grown up restricted and confined to the island, which is her prison, and her father as the jailer and ultimately the murderer of her two husbands. Maggie revisits "la isla" several years after her initial trip. As other readers retort her possible stupidity in going back to the island and risking what she ultimately risks, I can understand the woman who does go back.....There are no clear cut reasons except one, and that is all about Isabel and the mystery of her whereabouts. The reader will have a racing heart when you read about the authorities detaining her. Confined to a house arrest in a hotel, she fears her situation in an escalating climax beginning with the awareness that the room and phone have been surveiled, and the hotel staff briefed as to the seriousness of her impending charges. Of course, no one tells her what the charges may be. She is under the charge of a Major, who escorts her in a confusingly obsequious manner to various prison and detention centers for interogations. Unable to trust anyone, the secrets she carries are now compromising her very own freedom. What did she do to risk her life and make herself so vulnerable to the justice of a foreign country? An engaging book that will keep you breathing fast until the very last pages. It will make you rethink your travel plans...well, maybe!