THE GIRL ON THE BENCH

In this novel, an aging Southern doctor takes in a runaway sex worker, much to the consternation of the women in his life.

Nineteen-year-old Lisa Higgins has just escaped the men who trafficked her for the last three years, shuttling her through black market brothels between Detroit and Miami. She isn’t out of the woods just yet. As she sits on a park bench in Bowling Green, Kentucky, she knows her former captor, Big John, is still looking for her. Then comes a chance encounter with Michael “Doc” McGinley, a septuagenarian widower who struggles to fill his days with meaning since retirement. He wants to do what he can to help the troubled young woman despite knowing almost nothing about her: “I believe the Good Lord puts people in our path, and it’s up to us how we respond. Nothing may come of this, but if it does, it was meant to be. Simple as that.” He offers her the apartment above his garage. It takes a full week for Lisa to take Doc up on his proposal—and even then she plans to rob him and move on—and her appearance greatly displeases his daughter, Jennifer, a university professor in England home for Christmas break. Despite the escalating tensions between Jennifer and Lisa—the former catches the latter stealing her dead mother’s possessions—Doc lets the young woman stay in exchange for helping out around the house. Doc’s neighbor Grace Ann Marshall is enlisted to aid Lisa in getting her GED certificate, though Grace Ann’s feelings about both the runaway and Doc himself are complicated. As the four people get used to the new living situation—one that is uncomfortable for everyone—they find unexpected opportunities to confront some of the long unresolved issues in their pasts.

Gildersleeve’s prose is sunny and smooth, and, despite the subject matter, he generally avoids offering readers anything too gruesome or explicit. Here, Grace Ann reacts to Lisa’s asking her if she’s ever seen pornography: “Grace Ann was caught off guard by words in such stark contrast to the beautiful setting. ‘No, I can honestly say I never have. Been tempted, since I understand it’s so easy to find on the Internet. But no, I haven’t. Why do you ask?’ ” The book is meant to be wholesome and inspirational, centered on the munificence of Doc (whom the author explicitly likens to Gregory Peck’s portrayal of Atticus Finch in the film To Kill a Mockingbird) and the inherent goodness of Lisa. But the author has perhaps bitten off more than he can chew with the topic of human trafficking. The difficult subject often feels incongruous to the novel’s tone: Lisa’s “counselors knew the horror of what happened to her, and hundreds of thousands of others like her in this country alone, is a far cry from the Hollywood glamorization of prostitution in movies like Pretty Woman, Never on Sunday and Irma la Douce.” Much of the book focuses on the other characters’ more mundane struggles with love and loss. Generous readers may be satisfied by the warm ending, but some will feel otherwise.

An upbeat but odd tale of kindness and redemption in the face of vast trauma.