Library Limelights 140

Jean Pendziwol. The Lightkeeper's Daughters. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2017.

Wow, just wow. Look for it! Not only is it a literate novel about growing up on Lake Superior, it's a mystery, or series of mysteries, unveiled piece by piece. I firmly relate to the first, and have some experience with the second, but it will bamboozle the most compulsive reader. Elizabeth and Emily Livingstone grow up on Porphyry Island between the headlands of Thunder Bay and Black Bay where their father mans the lighthouse. It's mainly a carefree, if solitary, existence in the 1930s. Elizabeth finds herself the natural caretaker for her mute sister. They live every inch of the land with its dramatic seasons and wildlife. Sometimes others come to visit or stay and the family makes occasional trips to Port Arthur for supplies. Several surprising events coalesce just as brother Charlie returns from wartime service.

An elderly Elizabeth is relating the story by means of her father's old log books. Profanity-inclined Morgan is the rapt young listener; orphaned very young, her grandfather was the only family she knew. Elizabeth had once known Morgan's beloved grandfather but admits her memory has gaps. Morgan begins to piece together missing bits on her own. How did the Livingstones' tenure on the island end in tragedy? Why did Charlie die in his sailboat on the lake? Where did the toy engraved "Anna" come from? Did Emily ever learn to speak? Together the two women find a deep companionship. Structurally perfect, it's a tale to lose yourself in.

One-liners:

Once someone was in her icy clutch, Superior was not inclined to let go. (162)

War and death can silence the strongest of men. (174)

He had known, for a long time, he had known. (201)

Two-liner: "You're a goddamn Indian witch," he said, his voice hoarse, almost a whisper. ""I'll get you for this." (157)

Grandfather:

And sometimes, when the wind crept through the cracks in the walls and drove icy snow against the windows, he drank whiskey out of an old chipped mug and talked about my mother. "She loved you, Morgan," he told me, his accent getting thicker the more he drank. "In some ways she reminded me of your grandmother. She was like the wind. Unpredictable. Free. Never knew what to expect from her. You can't tie down the wind, Morgan. It dances where it pleases." And then he'd take a big swallow, and tell me that my mother had fought. She fought so hard, but she wasn't strong enough, and the wind had carried her away. I was only a baby when she died. 

I don't remember her, and I didn't miss her. Not then. He was enough. (33-4)

Winter visitors:

When I raised my head, I was close enough to see the yellow eyes of a large male as he glanced in my direction before returning his focus to my sister., circling as a unit with the others in the pack. Emily turned slightly and crouched down, catching those piercing yellow eyes with her striking gray ones, fearless in her round, pale face. I lay still in the snow, my bare hands prickling from the cold, not daring to move. The wolf stopped. Their eyes locked. The other wolves stopped too. I could hear them whining, see them pacing in tight patterns while they waited on the alpha. Minutes passed before Emily moved again, and then she simply stood, turned and walked past the brute toward me. (127)

November terror:

She broke through the fog less than thirty yards away, a specter, rearing like the cliffs of the Sleeping Giant, massive and gray, bearing blindly toward our little wooden boat. We were a tiny cork bobbing on the blanketed surface, far beneath her decks, invisible, and right in her path. 

"David!" I screamed. 

David was in the stern already, straining with the outboard. He yanked; it sputtered and failed once, twice, before roaring to life. I cowered in the bottom of little Sweet Pea. The steel hull of the freighter towered over us, and as David turned out of her path, I could hear the tapping of the water as it parted for her prow. (199)

Alice Sebold. The Lovely Bones. USA: Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company, 2002.

How can the effect of a young teenager's violent death be warmly expansive into her family and circle of friends? Sebold shows us how in this very inventive novel. Suzie Salmon died at the age of fourteen and went to her version of heaven where she can watch the earthly figures she left behind. Gifted sister Lindsey, her parents, boyfriend Ray, her perverted killer, the extra-sensory Ruth ... all these and more are explored as they deal with mourning. They will never have a body or Suzie's bones for closure.

Suzie's memories are sweetly funny as only fumbling teenage life can be; her observations from a distance gradually reflect a spiritual growth. Her father instinctively knows who committed the murder but there's no proof. Mother Abigail goes off the rails with the investigating detective; Lindsey stays strong and true to herself; Grandma Lynn is an unforgettable character. A few of them have the ability to sense Suzie's presence although she cannot interfere with them. Heaven and dead spirits are all too believable; wouldn't we all prefer such a hereafter? The book was such a bestseller, it doesn't seem like it was fifteen years ago.

One-liners:

There wasn't a lot of bullshit in my heaven. (8)

The guilt on him, the hand of God pressing down on him, saying, You were not there when your daughter needed you. (58)

Had my brother really seen me somehow, or was he merely a little boy telling beautiful lies? (95)

Two-liner: If he died, I would have him forever. Was this so wrong to want? (258)

Grandma rules:

"Okay, clear off the table and get your mother over here. I'm doing a makeover." 

"Mother, that's crazy. I have all these dishes to do." 

"Abigail," my father said. 

"Oh no. She may get you to drink, but she's not getting those instruments of torture near me." 

"I'm not drunk," he said. 

"You're smiling," my mother said. 

"So sue him," Grandma Lynn said. "Buckley, grab your mother's hand and drag her over here." My brother obliged. It was fun to see his mother be bossed and prodded. (101)

Camp for Gifteds:

"What's the fish for?" Ruth asked, nodding her head toward my sister's nametag. "Are you religious?" 

"Notice the direction of the fish," Lindsey said, wishing simultaneously that they had vanilla puddings at breakfast. They would go great with her pancakes. 

"Ruth Connors, poet," Ruth said, by way of introduction. 

"Lindsey," Lindsey said. 

"Salmon, right?" 

"Please don't," Lindsey said, and for a second Ruth could feel the feeling a little more vividly ―what it was like to claim me. How people looked at Lindsey and imagined a girl covered in blood. (116)

A neighbour ruminates:

While Ruana's hands grew wet and swollen paring apple after apple, she began to say the word in her mind, the one she had avoided for years: divorce. It had been something about the crumpled, clinging postures of her son and Ruth that finally freed her. She could not remember the last time she had gone to bed at the same time as her husband. He walked in the room like a ghost and like a ghost slipped in between the sheets, barely creasing them. He was not unkind in the ways that the television and newspapers were full of. His cruelty was in his absence. Even when he came and sat at her dinner table and ate her food, he was not there. (314)

Jane Harper. The Dry. USA: Thorndike Press (large print), 2016.

From the reading list of Belgian Waffle, my fave blogger, I entered the dry, dry, dry land of southeast Australia farming country. Aaron Falk, federal financial cop from Melbourne, returns to Kiewarra, the home of his youth. His old friend Luke Hadler has been cruelly murdered along with his wife Karen and young son. Falk has no friends there. It's widely believed he was implicated in the drowning death of Ellie Deacon twenty years before; only old friends Gretchen and Luke's parents have time for him. Reluctantly he agrees to join the investigation of the family murders, establishing a working relationship with local Sgt. Raco.

The town is tight with anxiety and tension due to the effects of the prolonged drought, and the violence against the Hadler family brings it to boiling point. Motivation seems non-existent but gossip is rife. Some suspicions are directed toward Mal Deacon who stores a grudge against Falk. Overt threats force Falk to watch his back. In this debut novel, Harper blends the current mystery well with flashbacks to the teenage days of Aaron, Luke, Gretchen, and Ellie.

One-liner: The signs of a community in poverty were everywhere. (128)

Two-liners:

"I blame age and hormones. We were all stupid back then." (187)

"This is a pub. This is not a democracy." (261)

Leaving:

Deacon's nephew Grant had moved into their farmhouse to lend a hand. Ellie's mother left two days after that. One man to resent was plenty enough for anyone. 

Throwing two old suitcases and a clinking bag of bottles into an old car, she had tried halfheartedly to stem her daughter's tears with weightless vows that she would be back soon. Falk wasn't sure how many years it had been until Ellie had stopped believing it. He wondered if part of her might have believed it until the day she died. (103)

Drought:

He reached the riverbank, breathing fast, and pulled up short at the edge. There was no need. 

The huge river was nothing more than a dusty scar in the land. The empty bed stretched long and barren in either direction, its serpentine curves tracing the path where the water had flowed. The hollow that had been carved over centuries was now a cracked patchwork of rocks and crabgrass. Along the banks, gnarled gray tree roots were exposed like cobwebs. 

It was appalling. (155)

A supporter:

Earlier in the parking lot, Gretchen had given him a hug. 

"Bunch of absolute dickheads," she'd whispered in his ear. "But watch yourself anyway." She'd scooped up Lachie and left. Whitlam had ferried Falk toward the pub, waving away his protests. 

"They're like sharks in here, mate," Whitlam had said. "They'll pounce at the first sign of blood. Your best move is to sit in there with me and have a cold beer. As is our God-given right as men born under the Southern Cross." (262)