This book is incredibly bland. As far as I’m aware, this is Bowen’s first novel, and she has greatly improved over time. The writing isn’t bad here, it’s just lacking in much depth. Willow Reade lives in Vermont because she followed a deadbeat boyfriend there and is now underwater on her mortgage and can’t get out. She would like to finish her doctorate in child psychology, but can’t figure out how to make that happen based on locality and finances. Driving home in a snowstorm […]
A Tale of Loss, Redemption and the Human Condition
A challenging but tenderly rendered novel about the consequences of loss. Intertwined plots focus on the traumatized marriage of Vermont couple Laura and Terry Sheldon who two years earlier had lost their young twin daughters to a flood, and also on the fragile psychological state of 10-year-old Alfred, a young African-American foster child placed in the Sheldon’s home. The author successfully switches viewpoints from one character to the next, without losing the flow of the story and at the same time giving us an inside […]