GIANT OF THE VALLEY

A family’s bond is put to the test by old and new challenges in Groome’s novel.

After his wife tragically dies in a car accident in 1993, “Big Louis” Slaughter leaves his high-profile career at the Gillette Company in Boston and relocates his three young daughters to Levi Lamb, a hamlet in the Adirondack Mountains. Now, in the present day, his three daughters are settled into their respective marriages, careers, and family squabbles. Louis believes “that the one thing people secretly hated to do was make decisions,” but there’s no equivocation when he refuses his children’s attempts to move him into assisted living because of his worsening dementia. Daughter Eleanor tries to convince Louis that moving him into a home is their way of showing their father that they love him. But her siblings face troubles of their own: Julia and her husband, Ravi Rajapakse—a former Wall Street investor worth millions—defy community preservation laws to erect a fence around their property, and Robin’s infidelity ties her husband to a murder investigation. The various family dramas are thrown into further disarray when Julia is diagnosed with cancer. There are a few too many dramatic twists that weigh this novel down, and its ending is overly melodramatic. That said, Groome carefully renders each of his characters and effectively details the surrounding wilderness of the Adirondack Park. The story is also sprinkled with references to the region’s unique landmarks, such as the High Peaks, and the quirky gossip and folklore of rural mountain life: “There’s a well known tree-hugger in Vermont who says that when you cross Lake Champlain and enter the Adirondacks, you not only leave New England, you leave all known forms of civilization.”

An original but uneven novel hampered by an overstuffed plot.