PASTS &
PRESENCES by GEOFFREY YOUNG photography by ALISON HARBAUGH
T
he novelist Lucia St. Clair Robson’s latest release, Devilish (2014), is a thriller about murder, romance, environmentalism, supernatural visitations, and the friendship between four formidable women. It takes place in Cliffs of the Severn, Arnold, which is also where Robson’s life in Pines on the Severn takes place. Sitting in her living room, she indicates through the picture window the homes of her characters’ real-life counterparts: “Faye lives there. I can throw a
rock and hit it. Doc’s house is on the playground at the corner . . . This is Alice’s house.” The importance of place is a constant in Robson’s work, though Devilish is a departure from the historical novels for which she is mostly known. Heretofore, she has transported readers to nineteenth century Texas, Tennessee, and Florida, to eighteenth century Japan, even to colonial Maryland. Given her life experience, itinerancy of time and locale is no surprise. Born in Baltimore and raised in Southern Florida, Robson lived in Venezuela during a stint in the
Author Lucia St. Clair Robson.
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