Grace Medlar

The Lost Papers of Sylvia Plath: a Novel Grace Medlar

The Lost Papers of Sylvia Plath follows the questionable literary escapades of undergraduate Sandra Kohl and her adviser Diane Richmond at a sleepy Midwestern campus in winter 1997-98. As the student struggles over metaphysical disturbances with her research around Sylvia Plath, the advisor draws on her youthful experience as a hippie visionary to bring the increasingly bothersome spooks in line. Egged on by Plathomaniac professor Jim Handler, the two women diagram the writer's mentors, family intrigues and critical hullabaloo in a multidimensional board game to entice a local collector into revealing some of Sylvia's famously missing manuscripts he covets. But things get out of hand for Diane. On a Full Hunters Moon night, a drug-soaked meeting with the collector becomes a contest of wits and mind games of the magical sort. And with the help of home-baked mysticism, word rage and goddess power, a new spin on the Ariel poems and the whole Plath enchilada emerges. Revised 2013.