Jennifer DuBois - Cartwheel

In contemplating the possibility that this book could be mistaken as a narrative about—and judgment on—real-life people and events, I’ve come to appreciate how entirely my view of writing and reading fiction is based on a single moral premise: that the act of imagining the experiences of fictional people develops our sense of empathy, as well as our sense of humility, in regarding the experiences of real ones. To me, the fictional barrier around the characters in this book isn’t just a necessary prerequisite for trying (or even wanting) to write a novel about the fallibility of perception—it’s also fundamental to my notion of fiction’s ethical possibilities in the world. And so it is as a person, even more than as an author, that I ask readers to have no doubt as to whose story this is. In the real universe is a girl who never did a cartwheel. This novel is the story of a girl who did.

Thanks to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Stanford University’s Stegner Fellowship program—for the time, the life-changing sense of possibility, and most of all, the people, I will be forever grateful. For their feedback on this book, I am particularly indebted to my incredible teachers at Stanford, Adam Johnson, Elizabeth Tallent, and Tobias Wolff, as well as my tireless comrades-in-workshop: Josh Foster, Jon Hickey, Dana Kletter, Ryan McIlvain, Nina Schloesser, Maggie Shipstead, Justin Torres, Kirstin Valdez Quade, and some other guy I can’t remember. Many thanks also to Kate Sachs for the eventful early recon trip, as well as Adam Krause, Keija Kaarina Parssinen, and all of the terrifyingly smart members of the No-Name Writing Group for their incisive comments.

Thanks to my wonderful agent, Henry Dunow, who is as indefatigable as he is patient. Thanks also to everyone at Random House: Susan Kamil, Laura Goldin, Erika Greber, and Caitlin McKenna; confirmed publicity sorceress Maria Braeckel; and especially my editor, David Ebershoff, for his remarkable insight and dedication.

Most of all, thanks to Carolyn du Bois, for teaching me to see that truth is often complicated, and to Justin Perry, for making me believe that, once in a while, it is not.

JENNIFER DUBOIS’S A Partial History of Lost Causes was one of the most acclaimed debuts of recent years. It was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction and the Northern California Book Award for Fiction, and O: The Oprah Magazine chose it as one of the ten best books of the year. DuBois was also named one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 authors. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, duBois recently completed a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. Originally from Massachusetts, she now lives in Texas.

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Cartwheel

A Partial History of Lost Causes

“In Cartwheel , Jennifer duBois begins with a familiar tabloid story and transforms it into something entirely new, vivid, and unforgettable. Her vision of a blundering criminal justice system and the ordinary, flawed people caught inside it rings true. And her voice—intelligent, humane, unsentimental—brings an entire world to life. Highly recommended.”

“An astonishing, breathtaking, and harrowing read.”

“[DuBois] does an excellent job of creating and maintaining a pervasive feeling of foreboding and suspense…. An acute psychological study of character that rises to the level of the philosophical… Cartwheel * is very much its own individual work of the author’s creative imagination.”

“Jennifer duBois, a writer whose fierce intelligence is matched only by her deep humanity, hits us with a marvelous second novel that intertwines a gripping tale of murder abroad with an intimate story of family heartbreak. Every sentence crackles with wit and vision. Every page casts a spell.”

“ Cartwheel is so gripping, so fantastically evocative, that I could not, would not, put it down. Jennifer duBois is a writer of thrilling psychological precision. She dares to pause a moment, digging into the mess of crime and accusation, culture and personality, the known and unknown, and coming up with a sensational novel of profound depth.”

“Jennifer duBois’s Cartwheel seized my attention and held it in a white-knuckled grip until I found myself reluctantly and compulsively turning its final pages very late at night. It’s an addictive book that made me miss train stops and wouldn’t let me go to sleep until I’d read just one more chapter. And it’s so much more than just a ravenous page-turner—it’s a rumination on the bloodthirsty rubbernecking of the twenty-four-hour news cycle and the bewitching powers of social media, and a scalpel-sharp dissection of innocence abroad, a book charged with a refreshing anger, but always empathic. Jennifer duBois has captured the sleazy leer of lurid crime and somehow twisted it into a work of art.”

“Like its namesake, Cartwheel will upend you; rarely does a novel this engaging ring so true. Inscribed with the emotional intimacy of memory, this is one story you will not soon forget.”

“Astonishingly beautiful and brainy … [a] stunning novel.”

“A thrilling debut… duBois writes with haunting richness and fierce intelligence…. Full of bravado, insight, and clarity.”

“DuBois is precise and unsentimental…. She moves with a magician’s control between points of view, continents, histories, and sympathies.”

“I can’t remember reading another novel—at least not recently—that’s both incredibly intelligent and also emotionally engaging.”

“A real page-turner… a psychological thriller of great nuance and complexity.”

“Hilarious and heartbreaking and a triumph of the imagination.”

Copyright © 2013 by Jennifer duBois

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company.

RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

duBois, Jennifer

Cartwheel: a novel/Jennifer duBois.

pages cm

eISBN: 978-0-8129-9587-9

1. Women college students—Fiction. 2. Americans—Argentina—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 4. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

PS3604.U258C37 2013

813′.6—dc23

2013016952

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