In her thirties, Miranda Romanac has an interesting successful career. But she is also alone and adrift-- in certain essential ways lost in the middle of life. At her high school reunion she discovers a shattering fact that further undermines her already shaky sense of who she is and where she is going.Then she meets the remarkable Hugh Oakley and her life does a 180 degree turn for the better. But everything has its price and the consuming love affair with already-married Hugh begins to take a bitter emotional toll.

When they move to a house in the country to start a new life together, the reality Miranda had once known begins to slip away the moment she walks in the door the first time. It is quickly replaced by alarming, impossible visions and strangers she somehow feels she knows but couldn't possibly because they are all from other times and places. Then other lives utterly alien to her own begin to affect her and all that she loves. But that is just the beginning of Miranda's odyssey because sometimes the worst thing that can happen to us is finding out who we really are.

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• Reviews •

"This is Carroll's first book with Tor and in the letter they sent to me with it they promise they will take good care of him. I certainly hope that they do and that this remarkable writer-who has certainly been deeply appreciated but not nearly as widely as he deserves to be-will finally get the larger glory he's well earned." – Gaham Wilson

"Carroll excels in finding menace in the most mundane aspects of life. THE MARRIAGE OF STICKS blends richly drawn characters with a disturbing system of metaphysics. It is his strongest work since the marvelous AFTER SILENCE."
– San Francisco Chronicle