THESE DREAMS

A story about the challenge of surviving grief begins well, but falters toward end.

Cricket Thompson, not quite 40 and not quite happy, lives the unexamined life in upstate New York with her two teenaged daughters and dependable husband. On the weekends she volunteers at a bird sanctuary run by town eccentric Pass Christian, planning the gardens and building a butterfly house. Then one day a madman steps into the local mall and begins shooting people, including Cricket's 13-year-old daughter Grace. Seriously injured, Grace lies comatose in a hospital bed with Cricket by her side—for days, weeks, then months. Believing that at any moment her child will wake up, she all but withdraws from the world and rarely returns home, virtually ignoring the adulterous solace her husband is taking with her own sister and the effect of the tragedy on older daughter Janis. When Grace dies, Cricket becomes delusional. At this point, the novel slips into familiar terrain. The first half, which quietly explores monotony and then details the slow unraveling of Cricket's life, provides a generous and sympathetic account of a mundane existence that is nonetheless so much better than the alternative on offer. But after Grace's death, Cricket embarks on a predictable middle-aged search for identity. She finds comfort with birdman Pass, and the two take his mentally handicapped brother Law with them on a trip to New Orleans to look at butterflies. When Cricket discovers Law may have been involved in the mall shootings, she drives away in a futile attempt to escape sorrow. Her subsequent wanderings in New Mexico (is she mad? hallucinating? really enjoying her new life as a waitress?) lack the poignancy of the opening chapters and rely too often on quasi-spiritual coincidences to bring about Cricket's recovery of self.

Chepaitis (Feeding Christine, 2000) is a polished writer, but her second effort comes up short.