Arlene McKanic

Mystery & SuspenseMystery

More dark fun with Flavia

Review by Arlene McKanic

“But Flavia can’t be dead!” this reviewer thought as she read the first page of Alan Bradley’s latest novel starring the 11-year-old sleuth-cum-toxicologist, Flavia de Luce. Further reading reveals that of course she’s not dead, but only pretending to be. Like any other lonely and somewhat neglected child, Flavia wonders what her hateful sisters and distracted, widowed father would make of her death. Her conclusion: not much.

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag picks up where 2009’s The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pieleft off, and like the first book, this one mines the vein of human sadness that exists alongside the fun and skullduggery. Along with Flavia’s isolation—she may not be the only living child in Bishop’s Lacey, but it feels like she is—Bradley’s far-reaching examination of the consequences of terrible grief and guilt add depth and poignancy to the book.

As Flavia lies in the cemetery contemplating her own demise, she hears weeping and goes to find a woman, Nialla, stretched out on a nearby grave. She turns out to be the assistant of Rupert Porson, a famous puppet master. He’s also a brute, especially to his many lovers, of whom Nialla is the latest. Soon there’s a murder at one of the puppet shows Porson puts on for the town, and Flavia goes to work, armed only with her chemistry set, her beat-up old bicycle and her preternatural intelligence.

It’s almost as if the Flavia books are the reminiscences of an eccentric pensioner, for it’s hard to see even a brilliant 11-year-old fully understanding all the grown-up tribulations (adultery, among other things) she encounters in the crimes she solves. But there’s also humor, as when Flavia injects a box of chocolates with swamp gas to show up her sister, or in the amazement of the town police when they find—again!—that she’s one step ahead of them. It’s both the humor and the pathos that keep Flavia from being annoying and unbelievable, like Charles Wallace Murry, the smugly infallible boy genius from Madeleine L’Engle’s classic, A Wrinkle in Time.

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, for all its tragedy, is still a delight from the inimitable Alan Bradley.

Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica, New York.

“But Flavia can’t be dead!” this reviewer thought as she read the first page of Alan Bradley’s latest novel starring the 11-year-old sleuth-cum-toxicologist, Flavia de Luce. Further reading reveals that of course she’s not dead, but only pretending to be. Like any other lonely and…

FictionWomen's Fiction

Snakes in the grass

Review by Arlene McKanic

“Are there no nice people in this book?” this reviewer wondered, even as she avidly turned the pages of Kimberla Lawson Roby’s latest novel. The novel’s subtitle asks, “Does Alicia, daughter of the Reverend Curtis Black, finally have the perfect life?” and the answer is a definite “no.” She thinks she does, however. Alicia has married the up-and-coming pastor JT Valentine against the wishes of her famous zillionaire father—a character who resembles real-life megachurch pastor T.D. Jakes.

Alicia loves JT and he actually loves her, and since she’s been a spoiled rotten princess all her life, JT is prepared to spoil her some more. The thing is, both of them are people to whom a decent person would give a wide berth. A budding novelist who finally uses her dad’s literary agent when no one else will take her on (and gets a big fat advance to boot!), Alicia displays greed and shallowness that would have been repugnant even in the go-go ’80s. JT’s wickedness is breathtaking; he is a flat-out, hairy-hearted sociopath. Convinced that God is ever on his side, he sees no problem with cheating on his wife with one woman after another. He lies to his women, to his wife, to his business partners. He lies when he doesn’t have to lie. Basically, he lies to everyone about everything—all the time. Fortunately, one of his women, a minx named Carmen, is as crazy and evil as he is. But unlike JT, she’s patient.

Roby’s characters may not be admirable, but they cause the same chill and fascination you’d feel if you came across a den of rattlesnakes. A skilled writer, Roby knows just how to keep readers hooked; you know that somebody has to get their comeuppance, and you hope the very first somebody is JT. After him, whatever happens to the other miscreants in this tale will be icing on the cake. When the hammer finally comes down, it’s not quite as satisfying as the reader would like—there are no gruesome deaths or Shakespearean piles of vile bodies—but it’s enough.

Be Careful What You Pray For is an irresistibly nasty work.

Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica, New York.

“Are there no nice people in this book?” this reviewer wondered, even as she avidly turned the pages of Kimberla Lawson Roby’s latest novel. The novel’s subtitle asks, “Does Alicia, daughter of the Reverend Curtis Black, finally have the perfect life?” and the answer is…

FictionWomen's Fiction

South meets North in enchanting new novel

Review by Arlene McKanic

You know you’re in Fannie Flagg territory when the first thing you learn about a character is that she has a Yorkie named Princess Grace Kelly. But, in Lisa Patton’s new novel, Whistlin’ Dixie in a Nor’easter, being in Frannie Flagg territory’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Tennessee native Leelee Satterfield is one of those women who went from the care of her father to the care of her husband, in her case Baker Satterfield, a man she’s loved since high school. In the habit of never saying no to him, she agrees to pack up their two little daughters and Princess Grace and follow him to Vermont because he’s decided he wants to run an inn. The shock of the transplant is, of course, enormous. The winters are appalling, the summer lasts an eyeblink. The inn stinks, is hideously decorated and run by a German brother and sister, the Schloygins. Rolf is merely dour, but if Stalag 13 had had a matron Helga would have been it.

Leelee may be intimated by the Schloygins, but she finds her employees simply weird. There’s Roberta, who uses the inn to evacuate her bowels since her husband won’t put a toilet in their house. Jeb the handyman also runs the computer company across the way. It’s a shack with one old computer—you can tell it’s old because it’s beige. Pierre, the French chef, speaks little English, and Kerri is the flirty waitress who Leelee mistrusts immediately. Yet, it’s not Kerri who Leelee should have mistrusted. The move to Vermont has been as much of a shock to Baker as it is to Leelee, and eventually he splits. Now the stunned, sheltered Leelee is left to run the inn and its restaurant pretty much alone.

Of course, she’s not as alone as she believes. The motley crew have taken a liking to her and help her out, and her old girlfriends from Memphis even come up for a few days to put some starch in Leelee’s formerly pliant spine. There’s an innocent love interest in the person of Peter, hired after Baker’s desertion and Leelee’s reordering of the inn’s regime. Oh, and by the way, she boldly renames her establishment The Peachtree Inn, even though a real peach tree would find the climate of Vermont lethal.

Funny, somewhat silly, often perceptive, Whistlin’ Dixie in a Nor’easter is a cozy read to curl up with during the fall.

Arlene McKanic divides her time between Jamaica, New York, and South Carolina.

You know you’re in Fannie Flagg territory when the first thing you learn about a character is that she has a Yorkie named Princess Grace Kelly. But, in Lisa Patton’s new novel, Whistlin' Dixie in a Nor'easter, being in Frannie Flagg territory’s not necessarily a…

FictionHistorical Fiction

Science and secrets in 19th-century Paris

Review by Arlene McKanic

Paris just after the Napoleonic Wars was a thrilling place to be. The intellectual life of the city was in full flower, with Madame de Stäel presiding over salons and scientists like Georges Cuvier investigating the origins of life. But it was also a dangerous place: Napoleon’s defeat and exile were traumatic and the Terror, despite having occurred two decades before, had left some of its survivors feral. It’s into this ferment that medical student and narrator Daniel Connor arrives, from staid Edinburgh, in 1815.

Daniel gets into trouble immediately when he’s robbed en route to Paris by a mysterious and alluring woman who goes by the name of Lucienne Bernard. She pilfers not his money, but the items he’ll need as an entree into the world of M. Cuvier: letters of introduction, notebooks, a mammoth bone and, most precious of all, coral specimens. Distraught, Daniel turns first to M. Jagot, a crook turned private eye who has a long history with Madame Bernard, then to the thief herself. Not surprisingly, Daniel falls in love with this intriguing woman who’s nearly twice his age, and the reader can hardly wait to find out whether the young man will ever get his belongings back—and, more importantly, if Lucienne really loves him, or is just leading him on in a labyrinthine game. Stott’s skill as a writer is such that one thinks she might be doing both.

Aside from her graceful writing style and believable characters, Stott also delights with her grasp of history. Romantic, full of twists and turns and glimpses of the past, The Coral Thief is an unlikely page-turner.

Arlene McKanic writes from South Carolina.

Paris just after the Napoleonic Wars was a thrilling place to be. The intellectual life of the city was in full flower, with Madame de Stäel presiding over salons and scientists like Georges Cuvier investigating the origins of life. But it was also a dangerous…

Fiction

A big-hearted hero

Review by Arlene McKanic

Twelve-year-old Eugene Smalls is a young man with problems. The first problem is his name. Smalls fits him, since he’s one of the smallest kids in his class. The name Eugene has been reduced to the humiliatingly girlish “Genie,” and people keep forgetting that he now calls himself “Huge.” He’s a bit too smart for his own good. His father has left. His mother loves him but is overworked, and puberty has made his sister Neecey incomprehensible. His attempts to fit in range from useless to disastrous. He has what could be called an anger management problem and an unfortunate incident in school leaves him with a reputation as an incorrigible. His only friend is a bloodthirsty thug of a stuffed frog named Thrash—named for what Huge used to do to him in moments of frustration. Huge’s other friend may be a football teammate who’s as much a misfit as he is, and his view of the world comes with a Holden Caulfield-ish cynicism. But Huge believes his salvation lies in emulating world-weary gumshoes like Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, heroes of the novels his doting grandmother gives him. When she tasks him with finding out who vandalized the sign outside the old folks’ home where she lives, Huge is off and running.

James Fuerst is brilliant in the way he immerses the reader both in Huge’s mixed-up head and the world in which he lives. His take on the class warfare and teenage sexual politics of a small New Jersey town is at once hilarious and poignant. “Are you a slut?” seems the most pressing question put to the girls. And Fuerst’s understanding of how the mind of an impulsive but highly intelligent preteen is liable to misinterpret just about everything is spot on. Huge’s conclusions about why Neecey goes to a particular party, for example, are both preposterous and perfectly understandable. Who hasn’t committed such a leap of illogic when they were 12? And who hasn’t felt Huge’s humiliation when everything you thought you knew for sure was wrong? We can only hope that our own comeuppance led to the sad wisdom Huge embraces at the end of this wonderfully written debut.

Arlene McKanic writes from South Carolina.

Twelve-year-old Eugene Smalls is a young man with problems. The first problem is his name. Smalls fits him, since he’s one of the smallest kids in his class. The name Eugene has been reduced to the humiliatingly girlish “Genie,” and people keep forgetting that he…

Fiction

Stranger on a train

Review by Arlene McKanic

T. Greenwood's novel Two Rivers begins with a lynching—or does it? We learn later that the incident happens in 1968, not 1928, and in Vermont, not Mississippi. We also learn that one of the possible participants, Harper, lost his pregnant wife that same night. When the action fast-forwards to 1980, we see Harper save an odd-eyed pregnant girl from a train wreck. Are these events all somehow related?

Two Rivers is reminiscent of Thornton Wilder, with its quiet New England town shadowed by tragedy, and of Sherwood Anderson, with its sense of desperate loneliness and regret. It's as if the loneliness that has plagued Harper since the death of his wife—the beautiful and ebullient Betsy, a girl he'd loved since they were 12 years old—has reached out and infected the landscape. The novel, after all, is set in autumn, a time of fading and gathering cold.Even the protagonist's name, Harper, calls to mind To Kill a Mockingbird, with its painful racial entanglements also set in a small town. Yet the girl Harper saves from the train wreck, who calls herself Marguerite, brings warmth and hope to Harper and his daughter Shelly, who was born that dreadful night and whose 12th birthday Harper nearly forgets. Marguerite, a black girl from the South who claims to have been exiled from her own town because of her pregnancy, is completely comfortable with these white folks she's never met. Why?

Along with Harper, Shelly, Marguerite and Betsy, Greenwood fills her novel with memorable characters, especially in the flashback chapters. There's Harper's mother, the town misfit, aflame with her indignation at injustice and whose passion for the civil rights movement seems to have led to her death. Harper's father, by contrast, is sad and passive. There's Harper's not-quite friend Brooder, a veteran disfigured in Vietnam, who was also in love with Betsy. Did his love for her lead him to do what he did the night the black man was lynched? It's to Greenwood's credit that she answers her novel's mysteries in ways that are believable, that make you feel the sadness that informs her characters' lives. 

T. Greenwood's novel Two Rivers begins with a lynching—or does it? We learn later that the incident happens in 1968, not 1928, and in Vermont, not Mississippi. We also learn that one of the possible participants, Harper, lost his pregnant wife that same night. When…

Fiction

Southern values, California style

Review by Arlene McKanic

Truely Noonan Jr., the protagonist of Nanci Kincaid's gentle, humorous, rambling novel, Eat, Drink, and Be From Mississippi, is a man wandering around in a sort of fog. His situation isn't dire; he's a wealthy inventor and has been since he was barely out of college. He has a vast apartment in San Francisco. His wife has left him and his romantic life since then has been tepid, but that hardly makes him out of the ordinary. His parents are gone, but at his age that's not very exceptional either. He has no children. His best link to his happy Mississippi childhood is his sister Courtney, who's as aimless as he is. She too has been dumped by her spouse, she too is rich, and she too is childless. Then, Arnold shows up in their lives.

Arnold is one of the people on the periphery of Truely's love life; he's a friend of Truely's on-again, off-again girlfriend's brother. When Arnold is sent to San Francisco for a job, he moves in with Truely, or more accurately, invades his space; he insists, with an astonishing sense of entitlement, to be left out of nothing in Truely's life. Still, both Truely and Courtney take to him, and she especially sees him as a project, feeding him Southern food and drilling him while he works toward his GED. Arnold gets into scrapes from which the siblings must continually rescue him, but the young man has become family to the Noonans, and when you're from Mississippi, standing by family is the thing that's done.

Kincaid, the author of five books and a Southerner-turned-Californian herself, fills her story with a rich stew of characters. There's Truely and Courtney's parents, both kind and God-fearing, save the genteel racism that forbids them from letting Truely's one black friend inside their home. There's Truely's passionate first wife Jesse, and his sometime girlfriend Shauna, who lapses into bitterness when her brother, Arnold's friend, is wounded in Iraq. There's Courtney's ponytailed ex-husband and the mouseburger he leaves her for, and Arnold's sweet baby sister and their grandmother, awed by the kind attention shown them by the Noonans. You leave Eat, Drink, and Be From Mississippi with a sense of gratitude for human goodness.

Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica, New York. 

Truely Noonan Jr., the protagonist of Nanci Kincaid's gentle, humorous, rambling novel, Eat, Drink, and Be From Mississippi, is a man wandering around in a sort of fog. His situation isn't dire; he's a wealthy inventor and has been since he was barely out of…

FictionHistorical Fiction

One woman’s epic journey

Review by Arlene McKanic

“Regret” is the given name of the protagonist of Alan Brennert’s beautiful, sprawling novel Honolulu. Born in Korea, which was a rigidly Confucianist country under Japanese occupation at the beginning of the 20th century, she gets her name for no other reason than that she’s a girl, and women in her country are treated just slightly better, perhaps, than livestock.

When Regret asks her father to allow her to learn to read, he slaps her. But Regret learns anyway, in secret, with the help of a family friend, and her ambitions lead her to become a “picture bride,” one of many women sent to Hawaii to marry transplanted Korean bachelors. On the boat ride across the Pacific, Regret changes her name to the more appropriate Jin (jewel), and makes the acquaintance of several of the other brides-to-be. In a funny/awful scene at the dock in Hawaii, some of them are appalled when they finally meet their fiancés. The men had sent photos of themselves taken when they were much younger, posed next to swank American cars they didn’t own. One girl turns around and gets back on the boat, but Jin resigns herself to marry Mr. Noh, a plantation worker who at the time seems pleasant enough.

From then on Brennert puts his heroine through her paces: Mr. Noh turns out to be an alcoholic whose violence causes Jin to divorce him, an unheard-of act in her old society. But this is Hawaii, and Jin learns to make her own way as a seamstress and, at least once, as a chaste sort of courtesan. Daringly, Brennert links her to various historical figures, including May Thompson, whom Somerset Maugham rechristened “Sadie Thompson” and turned into a character in his story Rain; Joe Kalani, a young man lynched for a rape he didn’t commit; and Chang Apana, the real-life inspiration for Charlie Chan. Brennert’s realization of Jin, a character of so different a time, place and gender from his own, is an amazing accomplishment in itself. Honolulu is a delight.

 

Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica, New York.

“Regret” is the given name of the protagonist of Alan Brennert’s beautiful, sprawling novel Honolulu. Born in Korea, which was a rigidly Confucianist country under Japanese occupation at the beginning of the 20th century, she gets her name for no other reason than that she’s…

FictionHistorical Fiction

A Wild West heroine reborn

Review by Arlene McKanic

Readers who’ve seen the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid will remember Katherine Ross’ portrayal of Etta Place, Robert Redford’s pretty girlfriend. The real Etta Place turns out to be even more intriguing, for no one knows much about her—not even whether she was really Sundance’s girlfriend. In his rollicking debut novel, Gerald Kolpan imagines the life of this mystery woman, placing her in a time and place filled with colorful characters.

Kolpan’s Etta is from Philadelphia, the motherless daughter of a swindler who dies owing too many people too much money. Because some of those people are shady, her father’s lawyer changes her name from Lorinda Reese Jameson to Etta Place and puts her on a train to Chicago. She moves on to Colorado, where she becomes one of the celebrated Harvey Girls and befriends the extremely taciturn Laura Bullion, one of Butch and Sundance’s gang. Bullion helps Etta escape after she blows away a rich psychopath who tries to rape her, and it’s in Wyoming territory, at a place called Hole-in-the-Wall, where Etta’s romance with Sundance begins.

Kolpan clearly loves his wayward heroine, who’s incredibly beautiful, tall, smart and cultured. As with a number of works of new fiction, Kolpan’s Etta interacts with real historical figures. Charlie Siringo of the Pinkertons is out to get her; she saves the life of Teddy Roosevelt while impersonating Annie Oakley (“A bully adventure!” he crows); the president’s shy and insecure niece Eleanor becomes a friend. Kolpan is also good at taking the reader back to the sights, sounds and smells of the early 20th century. He describes the vileness of pre-Harvey Girls railroad food, the threadbare carpet of a dingy brownstone, the flowery but sincere way one lady or gentleman addressed another. When Butch and Sundance finally buy the farm in Bolivia in 1909, the resourceful Etta fades from history, but doesn’t fade away. Like Rose in Titanic, she goes on to lead a rich and eventful life. Etta is indeed a bully adventure!

Arlene McKanic finds adventure in Jamaica, New York.

Readers who’ve seen the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid will remember Katherine Ross’ portrayal of Etta Place, Robert Redford’s pretty girlfriend. The real Etta Place turns out to be even more intriguing, for no one knows much about her—not even whether she was…

Fiction

Cutting for Stone

Review by Arlene McKanic

Abraham Verghese’s first novel, Cutting for Stone, with its huge cast of characters and exotic locales—including the Bronx—has a richness that recalls Conrad or Forster. Set mostly in and around Addis Ababa and New York, the story follows the life of Marion Praise Stone. His mother, a nun, died giving birth to Marion and his twin Shiva, and their Anglo-Indian father fled the country after the catastrophe. As a result, the twins are cared for by Hema, an irascible but hugely loving Indian born-doctor, and the saintly Ghosh, another Indian-born physician who spends years pining for Hema even as they raise the twins together. Rosina is the boys’ nanny and her daughter Genet is their playmate and “sister,” while Matron is the stern but loving head of both the family and the “Missing” (the Ethiopian mispronunciation of Mission) hospital where the family lives and ministers to the needs of the poor.

Marion, the narrator, shares a nearly mystical connection with his twin: in fact, they were born joined at the head. Though both boys are handsome and intelligent, Shiva is an oddity; one is tempted to describe him as a high-functioning autistic savant. Both brothers, predictably, go into medicine. Marion becomes an excellent if unheralded surgeon, but Shiva, with no formal medical training, becomes a pioneer in fistula repair, a skill desperately needed Ethiopia. Yet Shiva’s inability to read social cues leads to a long estrangement between the brothers and eventual disaster for not only the two of them but also for Genet, whom Marion grows to love.

Such is Verghese’s talent that minor characters like patients, interns, Ethiopian soldiers and even the emperor’s spoiled little dog are compelling. Trained as a doctor (his memoir about working with AIDS patients garnered considerable acclaim), his depictions of surgery are graphic without being macabre, and he’s also excellent at juxtaposing the intimate life of a family with the larger crises happening in the outside world. Cutting for Stone is a brilliantly realized book that the reader wants to live in, if only for a while.

Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica, New York.

Abraham Verghese’s first novel, Cutting for Stone, with its huge cast of characters and exotic locales—including the Bronx—has a richness that recalls Conrad or Forster. Set mostly in and around Addis Ababa and New York, the story follows the life of Marion Praise Stone. His…

Fiction

Second novel is a success for Souljah

Review by Arlene McKanic

Midnight, the eponymous protagonist of Sister Souljah's fascinating, long-awaited novel – no doubt the first of at least two parts, as it begins in mystery and ends in a cliffhanger – is a seriously put-upon young man. A devout Sudanese Muslim, his devotion to his beautiful and talented mother and adorable little sister is absolute. He works in New York's Chinatown to help support them, and studies martial arts under a Pat Morita – esque sensei to protect them. His religion forbids drinking, drugs and premarital sex, though these vices seem part of the air he breathes. When he falls in love with Akemi, a brilliant Japanese artist who speaks not a word of English, he and his family feel that the only honorable thing for him to do is marry her. He's also, by the way, an efficient and cold – blooded killer. But it's a testament to Souljah's talent as a writer that we like and admire Midnight, even if we don't share or understand his values. Despite those unfortunate murders, he's the farthest thing from a psychopath. He loves passionately and unshakably. He is incorruptible, unfailingly respectful to his elders and hardworking in a way that's astonishing to his American – born friends.

Souljah not only brings Midnight to vibrant, complex life, but also makes her minor characters distinct and believable. We get to know the boys Midnight runs with, the brazen neighborhood girls he runs away from, the Chinese fishmonger he works for, the jovial bookseller who engages him in occasional games of chess. We identify with Midnight's patient, loving mother even as we're appalled that she lets her teenaged son get married in America, where he's not old enough to vote, drive or rent an apartment.

Souljah's first novel, The Coldest Winter Ever, is credited with starting the urban lit genre and has been selling steadily since its publication in 1999. In this second novel she continues to portray the realities of urban life. Midnight is remarkable for the empathy, insight and compassion it brings to its myriad characters and their intersecting worlds.

Arlene McKanic writes from Blair, South Carolina.

Midnight, the eponymous protagonist of Sister Souljah's fascinating, long-awaited novel - no doubt the first of at least two parts, as it begins in mystery and ends in a cliffhanger - is a seriously put-upon young man. A devout Sudanese Muslim, his devotion to his…

FictionHistorical Fiction

The Heretic’s Daughter

Review by Arlene McKanic

Even now, no one really knows what caused the atrocities known as the Salem Witch Trials. In 1692, more than 150 people—mostly women—were arrested and accused of witchery. Historians have blamed everything from Puritan misogyny, to landlust, to ergot poisoning from a fungus that grows on rye and can cause psychosis. Kathleen Kent’s debut, The Heretic’s Daughter, a novelization of a true event, tells the story of one family caught up in the madness.

The Carriers are not like other Puritan families. The patriarch, Thomas, is over seven feet tall. His much younger wife, Martha, is difficult and sharp tongued, and no one knows this more than her daughter Sarah, the book’s narrator. Their lives are somber, their days dominated by backbreaking work. The family members are, perhaps, not as kind to each other as they could be. Dangers are everywhere, from murderous raids by Indians whose land is being encroached upon, to illnesses and calamities that know no remedy. When we first meet the Carriers, they’re making their way, in the middle of another hard winter, from the town of Billerica in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the neighboring town of Andover. They believe they’re outrunning the smallpox. They’re not. And this is where the trouble begins.

Kent recounts the townspeople’s case against Goodwife Carrier, incident by small incident. Her family brought the smallpox, she bewitched a fire so that it blew onto someone else’s land and not hers, her insolent tongue caused livestock to sicken and die. Tellingly, there’s a beef between her husband and brother-in-law, and her nephew wants her property. Soon Martha is arrested and brought 17 miles to Salem, where she’s accused by that lovely bunch of girls from The Crucible.

A descendent of the Carriers, Kent relates the story quietly, with moments of beauty that give way to horror, then to redemption. The Heretic’s Daughter not only chronicles the insanity of the witch trials, but a family learning—maybe too late—to truly value each other.

Arlene McKanic writes from South Carolina.

Caught in the madness of Salem, 1692
FictionHistorical Fiction

Away

Review by Arlene McKanic

Lillian Leyb, the heroine of Amy Bloom’s latest novel, gives the appearance of a young woman who’s practical to the point of a sort of animal amorality. The survivor of a massacre that took the lives of her parents, husband and, she believes, her little daughter Sophie, she sets sail in 1924 for America, where she’s taken in by a cousin, gets a job as a mediocre seamstress and quickly becomes the mistress of not one but two theater bigwigs who happen to be father and son. Lillian is prepared to let this comfortable state of affairs continue until another cousin tells her that Sophie just might have survived the pogrom and is now living with a family in Siberia. Here the novel, which could have been subtitled “Sophie’s Mother’s Choice,” stops being the somewhat offbeat story of an immigrant looking for a better life in America and becomes an almost Homeric quest.

What makes Away especially appealing is that Lillian, who can’t afford a transatlantic trip, decides to go west, across the continental United States, up to Alaska and over the Bering Strait and into Russia to find her daughter. The grueling journey, which takes years, leads Lillian, like Ulysses, to meet all manner of folk, most of whom help her in one way or another.

The heroine handles all the twists and turns of her travels with her usual practicality; placid, unbreakable optimism; and steely will. Bloom’s writing is clear, rich and shot through with moments of humor, as when a prostitute Lillian befriends bursts into song after the gruesome murder of her pimp. After an inmate in the women’s prison Lillian is sent to is beaten unconscious, all the matron can say is, “Ladies, tidy up.” Lillian herself is not quite the naif most people take her for and, like a force of nature, her impact on the people she meets even briefly can be profound. Some prosper, as we see in brief flash forwards; others don’t. But most find Lillian unforgettable, and so will the readers of this absorbing book.

Arlene McKanic is a writer in Jamaica, New York.

Bloom's writing is clear, rich and shot through with moments of humor, as when a prostitute Lillian befriends bursts into song after the gruesome murder of her pimp.

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