THE SECOND SILENCE

Another grip-the-reader from the popular Goudge (One Last Dance, 1999, etc.), whose melodramas explore contemporary family crises: this time, the plight of three women who must confront the past when a child is seized by her estranged father.

The father, Robert Van Doren, is (no surprise) a monster with no redeeming features. The three women are more shaded, and, along with defeating Robert, are capable of change or of admitting error. The story, set in upstate New York, is narrated by Nana Quinn, her daughter Mary Catherine Quinn, and her granddaughter Noelle, whose five-year-old Emma has been snatched by Robert. Far back, Mary married fellow high school senior Charlie Jeffers when she fell pregnant, and while she loved him, couldn’t cope with the baby and so went home to mother Nana, who never did approve of Charlie. Nana effectively raised Noelle after Mary divorced Charlie and went to work in New York. Now, a grown-up Noelle, timid and alienated from Mary, by this point a successful business woman, marries the seemingly glamorous Robert, but soon he reveals himself to be manipulative and cruel. Noelle takes up the bottle, is hospitalized, then recovers to bear Emma. When she wants a divorce, though, Robert dopes her drink, accuses her of still being an alcoholic, and, claiming sole custody, seizes Emma. As a newly strong and determined Noelle fights to get her daughter back, Mary comes home to help and finds herself still drawn to Charlie, now a widower and editor of the local paper. Meanwhile, Robert, who has half the county in his pocket, is on a vicious campaign to keep Emma—setting fires, vandalizing Charlie’s offices, etc. And when the women begin to suspect his role in a long-ago death and suicide, Robert turns positively murderous.

A fast-churning suspenser for Goudge’s legion of fans.