Kelly Blewett

NonfictionTravelHistory

Exploring our forgotten history

Review by Kelly Blewett

History buff Andrew Carroll—best known for his remarkable work in archiving and publishing American wartime letters—offers a new book that profiles 50 or so forgotten locations in the United States whose stories continue to impact us today. The project began with an unruly file folder where Carroll would stuff history articles he found intriguing, creating a sort of rabbit trail. Then, one fine day, he decided to start visiting these locations to see what they looked like in real life and whether the people who lived near them had any sense of their significance. The result is Here Is Where: part travel memoir, part history, and wholly entertaining.

With Carroll as your guide, visit Niihau, a privately owned island near Hawaii where an airplane crashed on its way back to Japan after attacking Pearl Harbor. What happened next will give you chills. Learn about a steamship that sank in Arkansas, carrying nearly 2,000 souls near the end of the Civil War. Find out about the stories behind little-known Supreme Court cases, the Spanish influenza and 19th-century orphans shipped to Michigan from New York. See their world as it looks today (often, a barren field with no marker). And witness Carroll’s humorous and spirited attempts to engage the people around him in the stories he’s researching. It gets hairier than you might expect (and even involves the FBI!).

Carroll’s own story of finding these sites provides continuity between the chapters. He is a cheerful, curious and avid character. And far from growing tiresome, the book actually picks up speed as it continues, with one of my favorite sections, “Burial Plots,” toward the end. The collection closes in Carroll’s hometown of Washington, D.C. For one brief vignette, we see our nation’s capital through his eyes.

Around each bend is another story, a surprising twist of fate, a crazy tale; it’s an exhilarating ride. In Here Is Where, Carroll invites readers to see their own topography the same way, so that we, too, might share these stories with others as he has so generously done with us.

History buff Andrew Carroll—best known for his remarkable work in archiving and publishing American wartime letters—offers a new book that profiles 50 or so forgotten locations in the United States whose stories continue to impact us today. The project began with an unruly file folder…

NonfictionMemoir

Strongman in the stacks

Review by Kelly Blewett

Imagine a man who can bend a horseshoe with his hands, whose outsized literary interests include everything from Jonathan Franzen to Stephen King and who towers above most of us at six feet seven inches. He sounds like a comic book hero, but the most heroic thing about him is this: He chooses to spend his days working in a public library, even though he suffers from a syndrome that compels him to act out, often audibly. Tourette’s, which Josh Hanagarne has referred to for years as Misty (for Miss T), is a formidable foe and constant companion. And the way he deals with her—graciously, courageously, humorously—gives this book its strength and staying power.

Most readers might not know a lot about Tourette’s, but that doesn’t matter. Hanagarne explains it to us in vivid detail and without self-pity. The Tourette’s-driven desire to act out—physically, verbally—is as impossible to avoid as an oncoming sneeze, and the precise manner of acting out is ever evolving. “In the coming chapters, when I experience new, significant tics, I’ll say so,” he writes. “Once I’ve had a new type of tic, you can assume it stays in the rotation. Each new tic is stacked on top of what came before it.” When friend and future mentor Adam grasps the full reality of Hanagarne’s world, he asks, “How have you not gone insane?”

Tourette’s and the myriad of impacts it has had on Hanagarne’s life—he took 10 years to finish his undergraduate degree, for example, and had trouble holding down a job in his 20s—sounds like it would make for a depressing tale. But that’s not the case. I frequently found myself laughing aloud, such as when he described his first major literary crush: the gentle and maternal Fern from Charlotte’s Web. His story spills over with affection for his parents, especially his mom. He’s curious about the big questions of faith and life. And he is passionate about his chosen field.

Librarians, Hanagarne says, are rarely suited for anything else. They are the ultimate generalists. They are a quirky, caring, funny, readerly bunch whose daily business is different than readers might imagine (ever dealt with snarky teenagers in the stacks?) and whose field is on the edge of significant change. The World’s Strongest Librarian speaks to that change, joyfully celebrates books and reading, and illuminates an unlikely hero who will be remembered long after the final page is turned. I couldn’t put this book down.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE
Read our Q&A with Josh Hanagarne for The World's Strongest Librarian.

Imagine a man who can bend a horseshoe with his hands, whose outsized literary interests include everything from Jonathan Franzen to Stephen King and who towers above most of us at six feet seven inches. He sounds like a comic book hero, but the most…

NonfictionParentingMemoir

Revealing a child’s immense potential

Review by Kelly Blewett

Jacob’s story may sound familiar. After a healthy babyhood, he began to change as his second birthday approached. His speech slowed and then stopped. He ignored his peers and parents. He developed unusual obsessive patterns, gazing at sunlight, waving his hands. He was eventually diagnosed, as you might have guessed, with autism. And so entered experts for speech development, motor skills, life skills. They announced to mother Kristine Barnett that Jacob would never read. In fact, he’d be lucky to tie his shoes.

Yet Barnett was not convinced by the experts. She paid attention to the way her son loved alphabet cards, to his interest in the sky, and wondered, why are we paying attention to what he can’t do rather than what he can do? And then she decided—against the advice of his educators and her husband—to prepare Jacob for mainstream kindergarten herself.

The rest of Jacob’s story spills forth like a fairy tale: He stops many disruptive behaviors, embraces his giftedness, finds friends, responds to his parents and begins attending college at the tender age of 9. While his remarkable trajectory may be discouraging to families of severely autistic children who have not made the same strides, the real pleasure of The Spark does not lie in Jacob’s story alone but in his mother’s unwavering view that each child has tremendous promise, an innate spark, which can be ignited and nurtured by perceptive parents.

Barnett’s devotion to her son will stir readers to take a closer look at their own children and loved ones, as will her singular focus on providing meaningful experiences for her boy. After a day of therapy, she packs up the then-silent Jacob, drives out to the countryside, turns on the radio and dances with him under the stars. The two share a popsicle while sitting on the hood of the car. She writes, “Indulging the senses isn’t a luxury, but a necessity. We have to walk barefoot in the grass. . . . We have to lie on our backs and feel the sun on our faces.” These experiences open us up to our very humanity. In this way, Barnett’s inspiring story is really relevant to all of us.

Jacob’s story may sound familiar. After a healthy babyhood, he began to change as his second birthday approached. His speech slowed and then stopped. He ignored his peers and parents. He developed unusual obsessive patterns, gazing at sunlight, waving his hands. He was eventually diagnosed,…

NonfictionMemoir

Strength in numbers

Review by Kelly Blewett

Those who have found solace in Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, Joyce Carol Oates’ A Widow’s Story or Sally Ryder Brady’s A Box of Darkness should take note of a new arrival on the shelf: Saturday Night Widows by Becky Aikman. While more traditional widow memoirs spend pages reflecting on the marriage, remembering the spouse and contemplating the future, Aikman and her gang of midlife widows are most concerned with the final part of the equation. How can one transcend what Aikman calls “the worst thing that could possibly happen”? Not by following the “normal” script for grieving, she soon determines.

When her beloved husband dies, Aikman is totally lost. She skims over the worst of the grief—waking up sobbing at 5 a.m., obsessively remembering the final days of her husband’s life—and cuts instead to a scene of a widow’s support group. She’s there, a year and a half after the death of her husband, looking for camaraderie on the road to healing. Instead, she simply doesn’t fit in (and actually gets kicked out). These widows are lonely and see no alternatives in the future. Aikman, on the other hand, intends to be joyful again.

This attitude informs Aikman’s personal story and the group of widows she eventually brings together. The Saturday night widows, who refer to themselves as the Blossoms, are younger, more interested in sex and romance, and more determinedly forward-moving than your stereotypical widow. They meet every month for a year—at art museums, cooking classes or the spa—and culminate their experience with an international trip. The vibe may be more Eat, Pray, Love than The Year of Magical Thinking, but it is compelling stuff.

Along with the stories of six remarkably resilient and admirable women (ranging from an entrepreneur to a housewife), the book offers an arresting analysis of the literature of grief. Aikman, working with researchers at Columbia University, dismisses typically endorsed platitudes about how grief works (think Kübler-Ross’ five stages) and shares the latest studies, which are far more in tune with the Blossoms’ approach to healing than the depressed widow group from chapter one.

A compassionate, inspirational and deeply personal read, Saturday Night Widows is relevant for a wider audience than the grieving. This book is for anyone who has faced adversity but refuses to let it define them.

Those who have found solace in Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, Joyce Carol Oates’ A Widow’s Story or Sally Ryder Brady’s A Box of Darkness should take note of a new arrival on the shelf: Saturday Night Widows by Becky Aikman.…

NonfictionMemoirEssays

The friends who shape us

Review by Kelly Blewett

For fans of searingly honest memoirs, the publication of Susanna Sonnenberg’s She Matters is a cause for celebration. Sonnenberg’s previous book, Her Last Death, explored her tumultuous relationship with her provocative and ultimately destructive mother. This book turns to more nurturing, though occasionally heartbreaking, women in Sonnenberg’s life: her friends.

Comprised of 20 short essays, Sonnenberg’s book discusses all kinds of friendships—those that ended well, ended badly, ended mysteriously or (occasionally) continue today. Her Rolodex of friends includes a writer, a painter, a stay-at-home mom, a rabbi and a massage therapist. I can only imagine what her friends must have thought when they found themselves drawn by her pen; but for readers, the rewards are rich. The book’s honesty, eloquence, laugh-out-loud humor, finely wrought prose and magnificent scope will keep readers eagerly turning the pages.

The Sonnenberg who closes the book is not the same woman we meet on page one. Because the essays are arranged chronologically, readers learn how major life decisions—from embracing motherhood to moving to Montana, from becoming a writer to working in an abortion clinic—have shaped the way she chooses and fosters her friendships. We see how time and change impacted some of her oldest relationships. Given this benefit of space and reflection, Sonnenberg adds asides that deepen some of the early stories. “Had I paid attention,” she says of one friend, “she would have shown me a first real lesson in grief, its disorganizing confusions, its inescapable solitude.”

One of the many things to appreciate about this book is its refusal to bundle each friendship into a neat bow. Instead, these memorable and lovely essays gesture to the real-life intricacies of relationships. They celebrate the many pleasures of knowing and being known. For readers who welcome a complex perspective beautifully rendered in writing, this book is not to be missed.

For fans of searingly honest memoirs, the publication of Susanna Sonnenberg’s She Matters is a cause for celebration. Sonnenberg’s previous book, Her Last Death, explored her tumultuous relationship with her provocative and ultimately destructive mother. This book turns to more nurturing, though occasionally heartbreaking, women…

NonfictionBiography

Alcott women were anything but little

Review by Kelly Blewett

In one of the most disturbing scenes in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, the saintly Marmee says to her daughter Jo, “I have been angry nearly every day of my life.” Eve LaPlante’s new biography of the “real” Marmee—Louisa’s mother, Abigail May Alcott—provides ample reason for her fictional counterpart’s daily rage.

LaPlante, herself a descendant from the Alcott family tree, traces Abigail May Alcott’s life from early childhood through death. We hear about Abigail’s relationships with her siblings, including her older brother, who would become a famous progressive (it is because of him that women were admitted into Cornell, for example). We learn about Abigail’s love of writing, her chronic bad health and her love match with philosopher A. Bronson Alcott. The last of these was, in LaPlante’s view, the cause of much of the trouble in Abigail’s life.

The Alcotts were perpetually in debt and moved more than 30 times. LaPlante’s chapter titles, often pulled from Abigail’s writing, reveal her subject’s despair: “Sacrifices Must Be Made,” “A Dead Decaying Thing,” “Left to Dig or Die.” Into this disheartening scene came Louisa, a daughter LaPlante convincingly argues had much in common with her beleaguered mother. Louisa vowed early on to become rich, pay off her family’s debts and give her mother a comfortable room. The strain between Louisa’s parents very much shaped her passion to write for money, which was why she wrote Little Women in the first place.

The narrative about Marmee’s life will be of interest to anyone who enjoys mother/daughter stories, American history or literary studies. Readers of the last category, however, may find that in fact, this “untold story” is already familiar, and may take issue with some of the author’s interpretations, particularly her obvious distaste for her subject’s husband. Still, the long and vital quotations from primary documents (some of them newly uncovered) and LaPlante’s careful research more than compensate for the book’s limitations. Especially as we move into the winter season, when many of us will cue our DVD players to the opening scene of Little Women, Marmee & Louisa is well worth a read.

In one of the most disturbing scenes in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, the saintly Marmee says to her daughter Jo, “I have been angry nearly every day of my life.” Eve LaPlante’s new biography of the “real” Marmee—Louisa’s mother, Abigail May Alcott—provides ample reason…

Memoir

A woman who lets her voice be heard

Review by Kelly Blewett

“Your voice is the wildest thing you own,” Brooke Williams tells his wife, author Terry Tempest Williams. In her latest collection, When Women Were Birds, Williams considers the development of this wild voice through a series of 54 short essays.

The book is contemplative, meditative and profound. We journey with Williams and we are not always quite sure where we are going. At the heart of our journey is an enigma: When Williams’ mother died, she left her journals to her daughter. But when Williams began looking through them, she discovered all of them were blank.

The blank journals become, in Williams’ creative hands, a vast canvas for exploring her mother’s voice, and her own voice—and beyond this, the voices of all women. It sounds like a tall order, and it is. But, as you move through the graceful prose, you will find yourself underlining key phrases. Poetic and powerful, these phrases help unlock a topic that is as hard to explain as a blank journal.

To engage such a philosophical theme, Williams’ short essays balance abstract musings with specific scenes. We go on bird-watching trips with her grandmother Mimi. We run into a poet in a copy shop in the middle of the night. We read letters from Williams’ mother. Meanwhile, Williams engages the ideas of artists, activists and writers, on topics as varied as the use of white space, conservation and reproductive rights, to uncover truths that are deeply felt but rarely stated. This is a book that only Terry Tempest Williams could write.

Raised Mormon and half in love with the land she lives on, Williams’ book almost smells like Utah. The dry air and bright sunshine are palpable. Wilderness, in the text, is a metaphor for both the land she loves and her very voice as a woman. Both are untamable. Both are creative. Both are threatened.

If you haven’t read anything by Williams, When Women Were Birds is likely a good place to begin. She has taken an enigmatic inheritance and transformed it into a beautiful meditation that (far from remaining silent) speaks loud and clear.

“Your voice is the wildest thing you own,” Brooke Williams tells his wife, author Terry Tempest Williams. In her latest collection, When Women Were Birds, Williams considers the development of this wild voice through a series of 54 short essays.

The book is contemplative, meditative and…

NonfictionMemoir

Twisted roots run deep

Review by Kelly Blewett

Theresa Weir, better known as prolific suspense writer Anne Frasier, admits she received a lukewarm reception when she approached her publishing contacts about her latest book idea. “They wanted thrillers, Anne Frasier books,” she explains in the acknowledgements. Instead, Weir offers readers a heartfelt story about her own life. In fact, though the book is categorized as a memoir, the recognizably gothic feel of the descriptions and the suspense-filled plot, as well as the extensive disclaimer in the opening pages, make it clear this finely wrought story portrays a particular, and partly fictionalized, perspective.

Spanning Weir’s early 20s through her late 30s, The Orchard relates the story of her unlikely and impulsive marriage to lifelong apple farmer Adrian Curtis. From the beginning, the marriage was incomprehensible to those closest to the couple. Tall, blond and handsome, Adrian came from one of the best farms in their rural Midwestern community, though it was also rumored to be cursed. Diminutive, dark and Audrey Hepburn-ish, Weir’s bohemian demeanor belied a dark personal history. Despite the odds stacked against them, the two fell deeply in love as the years passed. And here readers get to what is perhaps the real conflict in this memoir: Weir versus the farm.

The farm comes to represent a series of compelling contradictions. The landscape looks beautiful and bucolic—the very picture of American nostalgia. But in reality many locals get cancer (including Weir’s uncle and father-in-law), probably as a result of the rampant use of illegal pesticides. The smell of the pesticides perfumes the air, but no one talks about it. The apples are impossibly, eerily perfect. The people here, too, seem to be inclusive and wholesome. But actually, Weir discovers, they are clannish and distant. Weir is forever looking in the windows, never quite part of Adrian’s family, even after 18 years of marriage.

In such unforgiving soil, Weir’s growth over the years is remarkable. She raises two children, nurtures her marriage and comes into her own as a writer. Her journey, at times lonely and sad, is ultimately triumphant. Readers will be glad Weir found a home for this brave book that examines a community complicit in their own undoing, unwilling to accept that a bright, red apple may have a rotted core.

Theresa Weir, better known as prolific suspense writer Anne Frasier, admits she received a lukewarm reception when she approached her publishing contacts about her latest book idea. “They wanted thrillers, Anne Frasier books,” she explains in the acknowledgements. Instead, Weir offers readers a heartfelt story…

FictionHistorical Fiction

The tale of a detective executioner

Review by Kelly Blewett

The Hangman’s Daughter, written by a descendent of the very family this historical mystery features, was already an international bestseller before being released in the U.S. And it’s not hard to see why; the novel’s page-turning plot keeps readers guessing, and the setting—1689 Bavaria—is no slouch, either.

While the book is called The Hangman’s Daughter, the character who seems to interest author Oliver Pötzsch the most is the hangman himself, Jakob Kuisl. A hulking creature who is ambivalent about his career as a state-approved murderer, the hangman proves to be smarter, faster, stronger, more sensitive, more decisive and (against all odds) the best doctor in town. Despite these remarkable credentials, he is also an outcast: lowly, disrespected and considered a sign of bad luck.

Our hangman has an unusual case on his hands. A group of orphans is being murdered one by one, and the town suspects the midwife of witchcraft. Tattoos that feature a witch’s sign in elderberry juice on the shoulders of the victims terrify the townspeople and stir up talk of a witch hunt. Meanwhile, a certain treasure has gone missing, and a group of itinerant soldiers seems to be pulling off all kinds of minor disturbances. Can the hangman and his friend Simon, a physician, figure out who really killed the orphans in time to save the wrongly accused midwife? Or is the midwife perhaps not what she seems?

Readers who like a plot-driven story with identifiable heroes and villains will be drawn to this ambitious novel. And unlike some stories in the genre, The Hangman’s Daughter only gets better as the climax approaches—an exciting duel between the hangman and his nemesis. It truly delivers the thing so many of us look for in our novels: entertainment.

The Hangman’s Daughter, written by a descendent of the very family this historical mystery features, was already an international bestseller before being released in the U.S. And it’s not hard to see why; the novel’s page-turning plot keeps readers guessing, and the setting—1689 Bavaria—is no…

FictionDebut Fiction

Bright lives, big city

Review by Kelly Blewett

Sometimes we read fiction not to better understand our own lives but to get a glimpse into a life beyond our own. For voyeuristic readers—especially those curious about the lives of young women in Chicago or New York—Girls in White Dresses, Jennifer Close’s debut novel, will be a welcome addition to the bookshelf.

Born and raised in Chicago and a longtime resident of New York City, Close deftly pulls back the curtain on a series of dingy apartments in bustling metropolises. Inside are groups of 20-somethings who graduated from college and are now trying to figure out what’s next. Marriage and/or a meaningful career may be on the horizon (or not). Regardless of what’s to come, this is a group that is more than ready for something to happen. Their lives bump together over vacations or wedding weekends, and the occasional (unavoidable) catastrophe.

We watch these young women find their way through a series of tricky transitions. Love is not center stage here—although there are plenty of weddings and bridal showers, boyfriends and break-ups—nor is there a sustained look at any one character’s personal transformation. Rather we observe the group navigating the whole of life itself. Though readers might long to get to know some character more fully, that isn’t the point. Instead, this novel offers something perhaps finer: a portrait of a generation of women at a particular moment in time.

Sometimes we read fiction not to better understand our own lives but to get a glimpse into a life beyond our own. For voyeuristic readers—especially those curious about the lives of young women in Chicago or New York—Girls in White Dresses, Jennifer Close’s debut novel, will be a welcome addition to the bookshelf.
Fiction

A very large tale

Review by Kelly Blewett

British journalist David Whitehouse has built his first novel on a crazy premise: A young man, flush with life and deeply in love, decides that pursuing adulthood in normal terms is a complete waste of time. Rather than succumb to the drudgery of being a grownup, this eccentric freethinker decides to return to his childhood bed and never get out again. To push the premise even further, Whitehouse imagines that, after 20 sedentary years, his disillusioned character has become the fattest man in the world. 

Those with weak constitutions should be forewarned that the descriptions of this enormous man—the narrator’s older brother Mal—are truly disgusting. Mal is compared to a sausage stuffed into a too-small skin. After being trained as a butcher, our narrator unsentimentally imagines a professional dividing his brother’s flesh into fatty steaks. While Whitehouse’s merry revelry in the grotesque could be something of a turnoff, the story’s momentum keeps pages flipping.

The story is told in two parts. The first begins on day “Seven Thousand Four Hundred and Eighty Three” of Mal’s tenure in the sheets. He is clearly near death. The second storyline flashes backward and attempts to explain—or at least observe—Mal’s path from his tyrannical childhood (in which he stole center stage of every family scene) to his morbid adulthood (in which Mal continues to be, as Whitehouse puts it, the planet around which his family orbits). Into this mix enters Lou, a waiflike woman whom both brothers love.

Ultimately the story becomes a pleasure as we learn that the younger brother and the older brother may not be as different as they first appear. Mal, whose “rebellion” earns him a cult-like following, also emerges as an insightful and surprisingly daring character in his own right. While Whitehouse’s treatment of women, all of whom seemingly exist only to serve the men, might be criticized, the ideas that drive this story and the originality with which it is executed make Bed well worth reading.

British journalist David Whitehouse has built his first novel on a crazy premise: A young man, flush with life and deeply in love, decides that pursuing adulthood in normal terms is a complete waste of time. Rather than succumb to the drudgery of being a…

Fiction

A must-read mother-daughter story

Review by Kelly Blewett

Sarah Bird’s latest novel, The Gap Year, is a must-read for anyone who loves mother-daughter stories. Cam Lightsey, a lactation consultant in the homogenous world of Texan suburbia, is attempting to prepare her daughter Aubrey for the next step after high school. The pushing-from-the-nest does not exactly go as planned, which Bird reveals through two simultaneously unfolding storylines. The first, told from Cam’s perspective, details her mounting frustration with her daughter and her growing suspicion that Aubrey has no intention of attending college at all. The second, told from Aubrey’s perspective a year earlier, attempts to explain her own seemingly cryptic actions in the present day. Like many daughters, Aubrey is both a great deal like her mother and anxious to rebel against everything her mother believes in.

In the absence of a father figure (Martin left home 16 years ago to embrace leadership in a bizarre religious sect), Cam and Aubrey have become incredibly close. Cam can read Aubrey like a book, a quality Aubrey relies upon and resents in equal measures. Meanwhile Aubrey can sling insults at Cam so personal the reader may find herself wincing. In short, Bird has done a remarkable job of creating one very specific mother-daughter pair and a dynamic that will feel familiar to many readers.

It becomes nearly impossible to put The Gap Year down once broiling tensions come to a nice simmer. In plot one, Cam vacillates between strong-arming her daughter into packing and realizing how outside the loop she really is. In plot two, Aubrey resumes communication with her long-lost dad and falls for exactly the kind of guy she knows her mother wouldn’t understand: a football jock.

I will say nothing of the conclusion, except that Bird knew what she was doing the whole time. As Cam and Aubrey learn to see each other in different lights, readers might reflect on their own relationships with their mothers, especially during the difficult late-teenage years, and decide to dial up Mom to offer some belated gratitude.

Sarah Bird’s latest novel, The Gap Year, is a must-read for anyone who loves mother-daughter stories. Cam Lightsey, a lactation consultant in the homogenous world of Texan suburbia, is attempting to prepare her daughter Aubrey for the next step after high school. The pushing-from-the-nest does…

FictionHistorical Fiction

One woman’s journey in life and love

Review by Kelly Blewett

Pam Lewis’ latest novel sprawls from Amsterdam to Argentina to the United States, carrying along a slim, quiet protagonist who is swept wherever fortune takes her. In the opening pages of A Young Wife, our protagonist Minke is sent from her rural home in the Netherlands to serve as a nursemaid to the dying wife of a wealthy stranger. After the wife’s death, Minke is shocked when the bereaved husband proposes to her. Nevertheless she accepts his proposal, and the pair set sail for Argentina days later. The remainder of the novel details the arc of their relationship, which is loosely based on the relationship of Lewis’ grandparents.

While there are singular moments of beauty in A Young Wife, a quick and tidy resolution to several central conflicts may leave some readers unsatisfied.One of the bright spots is the moment Minke has on a moonlit beach in Argentina. “A great deal had changed in her,” the narrator tells us. And then, wonderfully, we see the change. Rather than the homesick girl she used to be, she is “glad for the raw expanse of sea,” so different from the Netherlands with its “buoys and boats and noises.” The writing here, as in other places in the novel, is so very fine. We hear the beating of the ocean, and our hearts catch as we imagine the contrast between Minke’s two worlds.

But occasionally, despite these glorious moments, the story simply lags. And then rather abruptly the novel simplifies and solves all our heroine’s problems. While we’re supposed to attribute Minke’s triumphant breakthrough to her realization of a strength that lay dormant throughout the early years of her marriage, critical readers may find Lewis’ solutions far-reaching.

Nonetheless Lewis takes readers on a stirring journey. The opening chapters of A Young Wife are especially strong as we meet Minke and practically feel her fall in love with an older, mysterious and very romantic man. For all the qualms readers may have about the trajectory of the book, its images are undeniably alluring, like the image of Minke in Argentina, holding her child in her arms, enjoying a warm night on a foreign shore.

Pam Lewis’ latest novel sprawls from Amsterdam to Argentina to the United States, carrying along a slim, quiet protagonist who is swept wherever fortune takes her. In the opening pages of A Young Wife, our protagonist Minke is sent from her rural home in the…

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