Maggie Pouncey

Perfect Reader: a Novel Maggie Pouncey

Flora Dempsey is the headstrong only child of Lewis Dempsey, a college professor and world famous critic. When Lewis passes away, Flora returns to her New England hometown to act as his literary executor. There, she finds herself responsible for a manuscript that he was secretly writing at the end of his life?love poems to a girlfriend Flora didn't know he had. As Flora is besieged by well-wishers and literary vultures alike, she tries to figure out how to navigate it all: the fate of the poems, the girlfriend who wants a place in her life, the wounds left by her parents? divorce, and her uncertain future.
 
Brimming with energy, humor, and the elbow-patchy wisdom of Flora?s still-vivid father, this enchanting debutis the uplifting story of a young woman striving to become the ?perfect reader? of her father?s life, as well as her own.