Deborah Donovan

FictionLiterary Fiction

Making adjustments after returning from war

Review by Deborah Donovan

Michael Pitre’s unforgettable debut, while not a memoir, is just as brutally honest as one in its depiction of the Iraq War, to which the author was twice deployed before leaving the Marine Corps in 2010. Pitre’s harrowing story centers on three men: two ex-Marines now forging new lives back in the States, and an Iraqi who served as their interpreter and is now trying to gain asylum in this country.

Lt. Pete Donovan was in charge of a Road Repair Platoon, whose daily mission was to fill potholes in the roads crisscrossing Al Anbar Province. The first step was checking them for IEDs: first in a five-meter circle in every direction, then 25 meters—the distance in which anyone on the ground would be killed if an IED exploded.

Lester “Doc” Pleasant was Donovan’s corpsman—the medical guy assigned to the platoon. When he returns to New Orleans after a dishonorable discharge for illegal procurement and use of drugs, Doc still carries his trauma bag with him everywhere . . . and keeps the programs from the memorial services of all his colleagues who died in chronological order in a cigar box, along with his dog tags.

Kateb, nicknamed Dodge by the Marines, was the platoon’s Iraqi interpreter. Immersed in American pop culture from heavy metal bands to Mark Twain, Dodge always carries a paperback copy of Huckleberry Finn in his back pocket—the subject of his thesis for a professor who was killed by insurgents.

In chapters alternating among the voices of these three men and moving back and forth in time, Pitre delves into the horrors they’ve experienced in the war and how they’re barely coping in the present. The novel is full of scenes that the reader will find hard to forget—like Doc frantically avoiding the New Year’s Day fireworks in New Orleans, their sounds like a machine-gun firing range; or Pete choosing to drink alone, since when his tongue loosens, “even the memories that seem funny in my head come out sounding like the summer vacation of a psychopath.”

Pitre’s depiction of the war, both in Iraq and in its reverberations back home, is obviously intensely personal—but at the same time, its messages are universal and timeless. Fives and Twenty-Fives is a highly recommended novel of this controversial and protracted war.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Michael Pitre’s unforgettable debut, while not a memoir, is just as brutally honest as one in its depiction of the Iraq War, to which the author was twice deployed before leaving the Marine Corps in 2010. Pitre’s harrowing story centers on three men: two ex-Marines now forging new lives back in the States, and an Iraqi who served as their interpreter and is now trying to gain asylum in this country.
FictionHistorical Fiction

Unlikely bonds in 1938 San Francisco

Review by Deborah Donovan

Chinese-American author Lisa See has made her mark in the realm of historical fiction by melding her well-researched historical sagas with strong female characters linked either by birth, as in Shanghai Girls (2009) and Dreams of Joy (2011), or by lifelong friendship, as in her breakout book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005).

In her ninth book, See explores the Chinese community in San Francisco, where three young women meet on an evening in 1938 as they audition for spots as dancers at the glamorous Forbidden City nightclub. Grace Lee has fled from an abusive father in Plain City, Ohio, where her family members were the only Chinese she had ever seen. She becomes lost in the maze of Chinatown, and is rescued by Helen Fong, the only daughter in a very traditional family. Her father expects her to marry soon and become a traditional Chinese wife and mother.

At the audition, the two meet the flamboyant Ruby Tom, a young Japanese woman passing as Chinese. She loves glitter, she tells her new friends, and she wants to become famous. The three are hired to dance at the Forbidden City, and soon each one becomes a star—while at the same time vowing to support one another through good and bad.

See traces the lives of these three memorable women through chapters told in their alternating voices, drawing the reader into their struggles, their romantic adventures and their backstories, which are only gradually revealed. As the story reaches World War II and then beyond, the women face racism, as well as more challenges in their personal lives and their careers.

See’s compelling story of these three resilient women—connected by fierce loyalty, as well as one act of betrayal that threatens that bond—is backed by meticulous research into the Chinese-American nightclub era, making her portrayal of this little-known period in history all the more memorable.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Chinese-American author Lisa See has made her mark in the realm of historical fiction by melding her well-researched historical sagas with strong female characters linked either by birth, as in Shanghai Girls (2009) and Dreams of Joy (2011), or by lifelong friendship, as in her breakout book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005).

Mystery & SuspenseFiction

Mysteries among the New England upper-crust

Review by Deborah Donovan

Miranda Beverly-Whittemore’s intriguing third novel, Bittersweet, takes the reader inside the glamorous world of the super-wealthy, where everything is not as it seems, and dark, long-buried family secrets gradually make their way to the surface.

The narrator is Mabel Dagmar, a scholarship student at an unnamed but prestigious East Coast college, who is surprised when her decidedly upper-crust roommate, Genevra “Ev” Winslow, invites her to spend the summer at Winloch, a secluded group of “cottages” nestled along the shores of Lake Champlain. Like her siblings, Ev was given a wildflower-named cottage of her own when she turned 18, Bittersweet. Mabel describes this rustic yet luxurious retreat as “a place of baguettes and fruit and spreadable honeycomb, idyllic and sun-drenched in a way I had never known.”

Ev’s great-great-grandfather, who died in 1931, bought Winloch, which multiplied along with the family over the generations into 30 cottages occupying the two miles of Lake Champlain shoreline. By the third week in June the Winslow tribe—Ev’s father, Birch, mother Tilde, siblings and a bevy of aunts, uncles and cousins—descend on Winloch “like bees to the hive.” Two of Ev’s older brothers are married with children; the third, Galway, is the family misfit—he works for an immigration advocacy group in Boston rather than immersing himself in the Winslow finances.

Mabel slips easily into this life of cocktails on the lawn of Trillium, the “manor house” occupied by Birch and Tilde. She skinny-dips off the shore’s secluded rocks and launches a romantic relationship with the mysterious Galway. But gradually Mabel detects some weaknesses beneath the Winslow veneer, eventually leading her to question how the family managed to accumulate such wealth while the rest of the country was mired in the Depression. And she ferrets out some shocking secrets about Birch as well—secrets which sever the strands keeping this apparently unshakable family together.

Beverly-Whittemore’s saga delves into soap-opera territory at times, but its strength lies in its elements of mystery. The result is a page-turner that will keep readers guessing until the end.

Miranda Beverly-Whittemore’s intriguing third novel, Bittersweet, takes the reader inside the glamorous world of the super-wealthy, where everything is not as it seems, and dark, long-buried family secrets gradually make their way to the surface.
FictionHistorical Fiction

Traveling the world to find his roots

Review by Deborah Donovan

Justin Go’s ambitious, sprawling and compelling debut novel, The Steady Running of the Hour, lurches from America to England, France, Sweden Germany and Iceland—even stretching to the Himalayas—switching back and forth in time from pre-WWI England to the present.

Tristan Campbell, a postgrad in California in 2004, receives a letter from an English law firm suggesting that he may be the sole inheritor of a sizeable fortune willed in 1924 to a beneficiary who, for all purposes, disappeared that year and never collected the funds, now worth millions. The evidence of his relationship to this beneficiary is tenuous at best, and Tristan is given the task of finding some piece of solid evidence in less than two months.

The novel’s intriguing premise leads Tristan in many directions, following flimsy clues that he hopes will eventually reveal that he is related to the beneficiary, his possible great-grandmother Imogen Soames-Andersson. Imogen and her older sister Eleanor, an artist, were the daughters of a Swedish diplomat and an accomplished English sculptress. They lived in London, where Imogen met explorer Ashley Walsingham in August 1916. The two embark on a brief but intense affair, each acutely aware that Ashley is to be deployed to the Western Front in only a week. After the war, Ashley joins a British expedition to Mt. Everest, where he loses his life—only weeks after leaving his entire fortune to Imogen and her descendants.

Despite a somewhat ambiguous ending, Go’s saga is engaging and infused with large dollops of mystery and romance. The Steady Running of the Hour should appeal to readers of each of these genres.

Justin Go’s ambitious, sprawling and compelling debut novel, The Steady Running of the Hour, lurches from America to England, France, Sweden Germany and Iceland—even stretching to the Himalayas—switching back and forth in time from pre-WWI England to the present.
FictionWorld Fiction

Three Somali women, bound together

Review by Deborah Donovan

Hargeisa, Somalia, was balanced on a fragile precipice in the fall of 1987—held in the grip of a powerful dictatorship, with signs of revolution emerging with ever-increasing frequency. Nadifa Mohamed’s moving, thought-provoking second novel, following Black Mamba Boy (2010), focuses on three female characters caught up in the maelstrom whose lives intersect in unforgettable ways.

Deqo is a young orphan girl who has come to Hargeisa from the local refugee camp. She is drawn to the relative safety of the city, where she sleeps in a barrel under a bridge, thus escaping the notice of the Guddi, the neighborhood watch group that supports the regime. The clothes she wears she has “grabbed from the wind . . . items that ghosts have left behind.” In return for her first pair of shoes, she signs up to dance in a pro-government rally to be held in Hargeisa’s stadium.

Also at the stadium that day is Kawsar, a widow in her late 50s who comes to the rally with friends—all forced to attend by the Guddi, though none supports the regime. When Kawsar sees Deqo being punished for not following the Guddi’s precise directions, she steps in to defend the girl—and their wrath then turns on her. Deqo manages to escape, but Kawsar is hauled off to the police station and placed in a group cell. Instead of being released after a brief interrogation, as she anticipates, Kawsar has the misfortune of confronting Filsan, a fervent young female soldier relocated to Hargeisa from Mogadishu to help suppress the growing rebellion. Filsan takes out her dissatisfaction on Kawsar, whom she first questions, then savagely beats “like a disobedient donkey.”

With a broken hip and pelvis, Kawsar is confined to her bed, unable to join her friends, who are preparing to leave the country before war breaks out. Deqo is still in hiding nearby and Filsan, who has become disillusioned with the military and its tactics, looks for a chance to escape the disintegration of her world that she know is fast approaching.

Mohamed and her family left Somalia in 1986, the year before the outbreak of the civil war about which she writes so eloquently. The story she has fashioned around these three resilient characters and how they survive is one that will resonate with readers for a long time.

Hargeisa, Somalia, was balanced on a fragile precipice in the fall of 1987—held in the grip of a powerful dictatorship, with signs of revolution emerging with ever-increasing frequency. Nadifa Mohamed’s moving, thought-provoking second novel, following Black Mamba Boy (2010), focuses on three female characters caught up in the maelstrom whose lives intersect in unforgettable ways.

FictionDebut Fiction

Petty crime shows a community what they’re made of

Review by Deborah Donovan

Oak Park, Illinois, lies at the center of journalist and NPR contributor Rachel Louise Snyder’s riveting debut novel, What We've Lost Is Nothing. This community, situated on the border between Chicago’s declining, predominantly black west side and the affluent suburbs, precariously bridges those two enclaves, with all their racial, monetary and cultural disparities. The story opens just after one quiet cul-de-sac of homes—Ilios Lane—is shocked by an afternoon of home invasions, all eight families affected to varying degrees, from a single cell phone taken, to the loss of multiple electronic devices, to one house completely trashed.

The only person home at the time of these nearly simultaneous break-ins is Mary McPherson, 15, who was skipping school with her best friend Sofia, a neighbor; both were high on ecstasy at the time. Mary’s mother Susan works at the Oak Park Community Housing Office, trying to convince young, urban white couples to move to the area in a program called Diversity Assurance. Long assuming herself to be prejudice-free, she is devastated by the burglaries, and assumes they were perpetrated by a gang from the nearby west side.

Mary’s father, Michael, sees himself as “the de facto leader of the Ilios unfortunates,” and calls a meeting that first night of all eight families on the street, where he tells them that “What we’ve lost is nothing . . . compared to what we’ll lose if we don’t unite.” But unite is just what these families don’t do, as fear and suspicion creep into their psyches. The author deftly delves into the rippling effects of the crimes on this disparate group, which includes an aging, nearly blind loner; an unsuccessful restaurant owner and chef whom Michael labels a “Francophile freak”; and Sofia’s parents, a Cambodian couple who barely speak English, and whose nephews become Michael’s prime suspects, targets of his blatant racial profiling.

Over the course of a day and night this seemingly tolerant, racially blind group of neighbors—most of whom barely know one another—gradually comes apart, forced to face the reality of their previously-hidden fears and prejudice. Snyder’s portrayal of the disintegration of this one quiet block is masterful, forcing the reader to examine the possibility of his own stereotypical behavior if faced with a similar situation.

Oak Park, Illinois, lies at the center of journalist and NPR contributor Rachel Louise Snyder’s riveting debut novel, What We've Lost Is Nothing. This community, situated on the border between Chicago’s declining, predominantly black west side and the affluent suburbs, precariously bridges those two enclaves, with all their racial, monetary and cultural disparities. The story opens just after one quiet cul-de-sac of homes—Ilios Lane—is shocked by an afternoon of home invasions, all eight families affected to varying degrees, from a single cell phone taken, to the loss of multiple electronic devices, to one house completely trashed.

FictionWorld Fiction

Born out of flames

Review by Deborah Donovan

Norwegian author Gaute Heivoll’s remarkable amalgam of mystery and memoir revolves around a series of arson fires set in a small village in southern Norway during May and June of 1978. The reader learns the identity of the arsonist quite early in Before I Burn, but it becomes apparent that what really intrigues the author is those affected by the fires—not only the families whose barns and simple homes were reduced to ashes, but also the family of the arsonist.

Heivoll was born in the very village where the fires took place, barely two months before the first one erupted. Throughout his childhood he had heard the stories—as the family car slowly passed “the pyromaniac’s house,” or when his father pointed out the barn that burned down “when you were christened.” Some 30 years later, the stories began to gnaw at his psyche, and Heivoll realized he had to delve into the lingering memories of those still alive to try and piece together the puzzle. By means of interviews, diaries and letters from the arsonist during his years of imprisonment, Heivoll gradually constructs a model of what might have happened during those tense weeks, when residents sat silently on their doorsteps all night hoping to catch the arsonist—described only as tall, thin and probably young by one victim, who glimpsed him through the smoke engulfing her kitchen.

Readers of Scandinavian mysteries from authors like Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbø or Karin Fossum will surely enjoy Heivoll’s superb sense of place and his depiction of this isolated village, surrounded by forest but still lit almost all night in the middle of summer. Like Fossum, he writes from the viewpoint of all connected to the fires, including the arsonist, adding to the reader’s understanding. And readers of the quiet, piercing prose of Per Petterson, like the acclaimed Out Stealing Horses (2007), will especially appreciate Heivoll’s spare, emotional telling of this life-changing episode.

Norwegian author Gaute Heivoll’s remarkable amalgam of mystery and memoir revolves around a series of arson fires set in a small village in southern Norway during May and June of 1978. The reader learns the identity of the arsonist quite early in Before I Burn,…

FictionHistorical Fiction

Shell-shocked and searching

Review by Deborah Donovan

Anita Shreve’s latest character-driven novel is both a historical glimpse into the side effects of war and a mystery centered on a young woman’s search for her lost identity.

Stella Bain opens as a young nurse’s aide regains consciousness in a hospital camp on a French battlefield in the winter of 1916. She’s been hit by shrapnel in her legs and can’t remember any details of her life before she came to France. She has an American accent and gives her name as Stella Bain—though not really knowing why.

Stella harbors a vague sense that the key to her identity may be found at the Admiralty, the headquarters of the British Royal Navy, so when she is granted leave, she gradually makes her way to London. There she is found, dazed and wandering, by Lily Bridge, a young mother married to a cranial surgeon who takes an interest in Stella’s case.

It is at this point that the novel takes on an element of mystery, as Stella begins to put together pieces of her past—initiated just as she imagined by a visit to the Admiralty, where a Canadian officer recognizes her as Etna Bliss. Hearing her name instantly sparks memories of Stella/Etna’s past, and by means of a series of flashbacks, Shreve transports the reader to New Hampshire at the turn of the century, where Etna’s tumultuous, transfixing story began. We discover why Etna was drawn to the battlefield even as we see her current-day struggles to heal and to move past her mistakes in a world where women’s roles—and rights—are limited. Her story is sure to appeal to readers of Shreve’s earlier novels, including The Pilot’s Wife and The Weight of Water.

Anita Shreve’s latest character-driven novel is both a historical glimpse into the side effects of war and a mystery centered on a young woman’s search for her lost identity.

Stella Bain opens as a young nurse’s aide regains consciousness in a hospital camp on a French…

FictionWomen's Fiction

Three women, bound together

Review by Deborah Donovan

Screenwriter Dixon’s second character-driven novel focuses on three women, their lives mysteriously intertwined over several decades.

Livvi Gray lives in contemporary Los Angeles and has just published her first novel, The Book of Someday¸ which is based on her own loveless childhood spent with an emotionally scarred father and his second wife, Livvi’s cold, enigmatic stepmother. Her father has remained a distant figure—both physically and emotionally—in her life for as long as she can remember. Now, at 26, Livvi rarely sees or hears from him, and actually feels as if she has no family at all. Her affair with a married man is leading nowhere, and only exacerbates her feelings of loneliness and self-doubt.

Micah Lesser is a sought-after New York City photographer, recently diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. She’s now on a mission to find those she’s betrayed over her lifetime—including her best friend in college, whose budding photographic career she sabotaged, and the fiancé she left at the altar many years earlier, abruptly deciding marriage would only hinder her own career. She’s hoping to gain their forgiveness, even at this late date in their lives.

AnnaLee is a young housewife living on Long Island in the 1980s. She and her husband Jack and their young daughter live in her parents’ mansion, which AnnaLee inherited when they died. AnnaLee loves Jack deeply but can’t contain her resentment about his inability to commit himself to his profession—first as a trauma surgeon, then as a lawyer—satisfied to get by on her income and his part-time salary at a small law firm.

Dixon’s story is told in the alternating voices of these three women, whose lives are gradually shown to intersect in intricate and highly improbable ways, as if the author had to struggle to somehow weave their pasts together. Her characters are compelling, however, and the reader quickly becomes enmeshed in each woman’s attempt to make the best out of her changing circumstances, which should appeal to readers of contemporary authors like Kristin Hannah and Luanne Rice.

Screenwriter Dixon’s second character-driven novel focuses on three women, their lives mysteriously intertwined over several decades.

Livvi Gray lives in contemporary Los Angeles and has just published her first novel, The Book of Someday¸ which is based on her own loveless childhood spent with an emotionally…

FictionHistorical Fiction

Confronting sterilization in small-town North Carolina

Review by Deborah Donovan

From 1929 until 1975, North Carolina sterilized more than 7,000 of its citizens, targeting inmates in mental institutions, epileptics and others whose sterilization was considered “for the public good.” Diane Chamberlain has based her latest novel on this controversial procedure, the Eugenics Sterilization Program.

It is 1960, and Jane Forrester has just been hired as a social worker for the Department of Public Welfare and is newly married to Robert, a pediatrician. They live in a wealthy neighborhood in Raleigh.

Ivy Hart is a 15-year-old who lives in a small tenant house on a tobacco farm in rural Grace County. Her father died when she was small; her mother was committed to a mental hospital; and her older sister, Mary Ella, left school at 14 when she became pregnant with baby William. Mary Ella, labeled “feebleminded,” has been sterilized without her knowledge, told she was hospitalized for an appendectomy.

In the alternating voices of Jane and Ivy, we learn how Jane becomes immersed in the Hart family’s dire circumstances, raising doubts in the minds of both her boss and her husband that she’s tough enough for the job. Robert is embarrassed by the fact that Jane is working rather than fitting into the Junior League role embraced by the wives of his colleagues, but he’s especially bothered by her sincere attachment to these poor families, which is starting to make her question the Eugenics Department’s plans for the Harts.

Chamberlain weaves an element of suspense throughout this emotional story as these differing views eventually collide in a powerful denouement. Necessary Lies is a poignant and perceptive novel zeroing in on a hidden social issue—reminiscent of the work of Jodi Picoult and A. Manette Ansay.

From 1929 until 1975, North Carolina sterilized more than 7,000 of its citizens, targeting inmates in mental institutions, epileptics and others whose sterilization was considered “for the public good.” Diane Chamberlain has based her latest novel on this controversial procedure, the Eugenics Sterilization Program.

It is…

FictionDebut Fiction

In search of a home after war

Review by Deborah Donovan

Paul Yoon’s 2009 story collection, Once the Shore, won numerous accolades, including being named Best Book of the Year by the L.A. Times and Publishers Weekly. Expectations were high for his debut novel—and with Snow Hunters, he has fulfilled them.

The plot of Snow Hunters is a spare one; it follows the journey of Yohan, a young North Korean and former prisoner of war who, after the Korean War’s conclusion, decides not to return to the North, but travels instead on a cargo ship to Brazil, where the U.N. has forged an agreement to allow former prisoners of war to emigrate. Yohan is apprenticed to an elderly Japanese tailor, Kiyoshi, who lives in a mostly Japanese community in an unnamed town on Brazil’s coast. The author skillfully weaves together scenes from Yohan’s youth and his years as a soldier and POW with those from the present, as his relationship with Kiyoshi strengthens.

Yohan’s mother died at his birth, and he was raised by his father, “a solitary man” whom he never knew well. He was 16 when his father died, and as he looks back, he realizes his parents were simply “a blank space in his life that he was unable to paint.” From Kiyoshi he learns not only tailoring skills, but also how to care for, and about, those who are now part of his life.

In the quietly resonant descriptions of his characters—Yohan, Kiyoshi and two local beggar children named Bia and Santi—Yoon paints an eloquent picture of the changes taking place in Yohan’s life as he gradually moves from the ravages of war to a contemplative and isolated existence occasionally sprinkled with moments of joy.

For readers who enjoyed A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee or Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, Snow Hunters is an introspective and moving novel to savor.

Paul Yoon’s 2009 story collection, Once the Shore, won numerous accolades, including being named Best Book of the Year by the L.A. Times and Publishers Weekly. Expectations were high for his debut novel—and with Snow Hunters, he has fulfilled them.

FictionHistorical Fiction

Murders in Italy trace back to WWII secrets

Review by Deborah Donovan

In his 15 novels, Chris Bohjalian has delved into a potpourri of weighty topics, including environmental activism, medical malpractice suits and interracial adoption. Some of his more recent novels are injected with an element of mystery, and he continues on that track with his latest—a brilliant blend of historical fiction and a chilling serial killer story.

This gripping novel opens in Florence in 1955 with the brutal murder of Francesca Rosati, daughter-in-law of Antonio and Beatrice Rosati.

Serafina Bettini is part of the homicide unit investigating Francesca’s murder, and she first interviews Cristina, the Rosatis’ only daughter, who discovered the body. In only a few days her mother, Beatrice, is murdered in the same manner, and it becomes clear that a serial killer is methodically eliminating the Rosati family one at a time. Wondering if the motive may trace back to the war years when the villa was occupied for a time by supporters of Mussolini, Serafina questions Cristina about her family’s involvement with either the Nazis or the local partisans trying to sabotage the Nazi efforts, bringing up painful memories.

Bohjalian deftly ties together the stories of these two young women as the killer is identified and the long-harbored revenge is revealed. He succeeds in turning a historical novel into a page-turner that the reader will not soon forget.

In his 15 novels, Chris Bohjalian has delved into a potpourri of weighty topics, including environmental activism, medical malpractice suits and interracial adoption. Some of his more recent novels are injected with an element of mystery, and he continues on that track with his latest—a…

FictionDebut Fiction

Folds of the truth

Review by Deborah Donovan

Elizabeth L. Silver’s gripping and introspective first novel analyzes capital punishment from the intertwined viewpoints of those involved in a murder trial that took place years before the novel opens. Noa P. Singleton, now 35, has been in the Pennsylvania Institute for Women for a decade, found guilty of killing Sarah Dixon, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania.

The mystery posed by the author is not whether Noa committed the crime, for she begins her story with: “I know I did it. The state knows I did it, though they never really cared why.” Instead, the book revolves around the “why”—and all the factors, past and present, that eventually led to a tragic and senseless outcome.

The main narrative is in Noa’s words—a first-person journal written in the months before her scheduled execution, which she calls X-day. She writes of her mother, who has not visited her in prison, and her non-relationship with her father—a one-night stand whom her mother calls a sperm donor, a man Noa never heard from growing up. She writes of childhood friends, and of the women who surround her on death row, whose stories she knows well. X-day is six months away, when out of the blue Noa is visited by Marlene Dixon, mother of the murder victim and a high-profile Philadelphia lawyer. Marlene claims to have had a change of heart—she no longer believes in the death penalty, and is in the process of filing a clemency petition that would reduce Noa’s sentence to life in prison. All Noa has to do is reveal why she committed the crime—something she refused to discuss during the trial, or since.

By means of chapters written in Noa’s words and letters written by Marlene Dixon to her deceased daughter, the reader gradually pieces together the puzzle of what happened the day Sarah died. It is an emotion-packed style, similar to that used by Lionel Shriver in her acclaimed novel We Need to Talk About Kevin (2003), as the reader tries to come to grips with how much weight should be given to mitigating circumstances in determining guilt or innocence.

Elizabeth L. Silver’s gripping and introspective first novel analyzes capital punishment from the intertwined viewpoints of those involved in a murder trial that took place years before the novel opens. Noa P. Singleton, now 35, has been in the Pennsylvania Institute for Women for a…

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