Tag: adult ficton

Saints at the River by Ron Rash

Saints At The River

Saints at the River

Ron Rash (Adult Fiction)

It was during Easter break when twelve-year-old Ruth Kowalsky lost her life to the Tamassee River.  One minute Ruth’s wading to the river’s middle to place one foot on the South Carolina side and the other on the Georgia side and the next minute she’s pulled downstream—her submerged body forever trapped in a deep eddy.  Soon, Ruth’s drowning becomes both a local tragedy and the center of an environmental debate with long-reaching political ties.  Caught in the middle is photographer Maggie Glenn who returns to her Oconee County hometown to cover this story for her newspaper.  Maggie must not only choose between grieving out-of-towners and her beloved river, but she must also confront events from her past that has driven a deep chasm between her and her estranged father.

Ron Rash provides a compelling story and serves up the question, “Should human life take precedence over environmental sanctity?”  When I came upon this book, I found myself a bit skeptical of the story’s premise.  How can you build a meaningful and suspenseful story around environmental activists waging war on grieving parents without making either side look unfeeling or unsympathetic?  But I had unfairly underestimated Mr. Rash who takes great care in presenting both sides of this debate and does so with passion, honesty, and neutrality.  He gives equal time to both positions and allows his reader to make up his or her own mind without fear of judgement or reprisal…unlike our protagonist, Maggie, who must bear and witness the full brunt of her choice.  Although the reader doesn’t get a chance to know young Ruth Kowalsky, her tragic death serves as a catalyst to understanding the motivations of her father, Herb, as well as the actions of Maggie’s own father during her childhood.  Both men are alike in their desperate search for redemption and closure.

Although I didn’t quite connect with Maggie and had little interest in her unfortunate and turbulent backstory, I was drawn to the Kowalsky’s plight and to the small South Carolina town caught in the middle of a bitter legal battle to protect its most precious natural resource.  Saints at the River is a cautionary tale of political influence, government overreach, and the delicate balance between life and the law.  Although there are many interesting characters in this book, the central figure is undoubtedly the Tamassee River.  It is a power onto itself and its water courses through this story like blood through veins.  It is to be admired, respected, protected, and—most importantly—never underestimated as history professor Douglas Brinkley once wrote, “Thus did nature triumph over man’s attempt to conquer it.  Nature always wins.”

Rating: 4/5

*Book cover image attributed to www.amazon.com

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Little Face by Sophie Hannah

Little Face

Little Face

Sophie Hannah (Adult Fiction)

**Contains spoilers**

Imagine you leave your newborn at home with your spouse for just a few hours.  When you return, the front door is slightly ajar, your spouse has just awakened from a nap, and in your nursery lies a beautiful and perfect baby…only this baby is not yours.  Your baby is gone and life suddenly stops.  It’s every mother’s worst nightmare only this nightmare is now Alice Fancourt’s reality.  Her infant, Florence, has been mysteriously replaced with another baby and no one believes her—not the police, not her mother-in-law, and not even her husband, David.  Everyone attributes her hysteria to some kind of postpartum shock or psychosis, but when Alice and Florence disappear without a trace only a week later, suddenly this strange case takes an even stranger and unexpected turn.

Little Face is a provocative thriller that explores and examines the complex lives of two very different mothers: one willing to do anything to keep her family together and the other doing the unimaginable to keep her family safe.  It’s a story filled with action and suspense that delves into some rather weighty topics such as depression, sociopathic tendencies, emotional and psychological manipulation, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.  The action is kept at a heightened pace with chapters alternating between the day of Florence’s disappearance to the next week when both Alice and Florence vanish.  Narration switches from first-person (Alice) to third-person so we’re able to both clearly understand what Alice is thinking while also being able to view the effects of her decisions and actions through an impartial lens.  While Hannah effectively delivers an intense and absorbing psychological thriller, the only issue I had was with the characterization of her husband David.  Hannah chose to make this individual unseemly sadistic and his treatment of his wife, regardless of her credibility or sanity, is nothing less than barbarous and inhumane.  We are given a glimpse into his background and gather that his mother is overly controlling and protective of him, but that doesn’t justify his sudden spiral into depravity and the unexplained erosion of his both his humanity and morality.  The reader is literally blindsided with this side of him and this character trait appears to have been included for the sheer and sole sake of shock value.

American civil rights activist Rosa Parks once said, “There is just so much hurt, disappointment, and oppression one can take… The line between reason and madness grows thinner.”  Little Face demonstrates just how thin this line truly is by showing us what extraordinary measures a person is able and willing to take in order to protect whatever or whoever is most precious to them.

Rating: 4/5

*Book cover image attributed to www.amazon.com