In the guise of a suspense story, Bieker delves into the heart of what it really means to survive violence.
After receiving a letter from her incarcerated mother, a Portland woman’s shocking past comes crashing into her present.
Granola mom Clove is doing her best to keep it together. She’s trying to wean her 3-year-old son, adjust to summer break with her school-age daughter at home, and grab a moment or two with her finance-world husband when he is finally able to hop off work calls. She soothes her anxiety with compulsive shopping, elaborate wellness regimes, and copious trips to the organic grocery store, “the safest place on earth.” She had thought that her lifestyle and having a family would help her escape a brutally traumatic childhood and grant her safety. But then one day, a letter comes from a California correctional center: Clove’s mother, Alma, convicted for the murder of Clove’s father after years of suffering harrowing physical abuse at his hands, has discovered Clove’s whereabouts. Alma is part of a #MeToo wave of women whose cases are being reevaluated, and she needs Clove’s eyewitness account of that night to be her path out of prison. Clove—who has told almost no one the truth of who she really is—needs to make a decision: help Alma and expose her secrets to her present family or turn her back on her own mother. Bieker is trying a more conventional plot with her third book, stuffing this story in the container of a thriller when it doesn’t quite fit. But what Bieker has always been best at is creating female characters with vivacity and precision, and she does that again in Clove, painting an indelible portrait of what living with intergenerational trauma and a legacy of abuse can look like.
In the guise of a suspense story, Bieker delves into the heart of what it really means to survive violence.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780316573290
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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