The Color of Night

(Vintage Books) The narrator of this novel about the persistence of violence in America is Mae, a blackjack dealer in a Las Vegas casino, who was the victim of horrendous child abuse and later had joined a violent cult. When she isn’t working at the casino, she spends her free time roaming the desert with her rifle or sitting in her trailer obsessively watching clips of Sept. 11, where she spots her old cult lover, Laurel, escaping the wreckage. Those images recall memories of her violent past. Bell is a creative writing professor at Goucher College and the author of 16 novels.