CHASING NORTH STAR
by Heidi McCrary
Debut author McCrary offers a novel about the daily struggles of four siblings and their unstable mother.
Life isn’t easy for the Phillips children in 1970. They’re a tightknit unit from a working-class family in a small Michigan town,and they’re all too aware that people gossip about their mother, Didi, behind their backs at the local beauty parlor. Didi is epileptic, prone to violent mood swings, and frequently institutionalized; her presence in her children’s lives is one of barely restrained chaos, swinging from indulgent affection to physical assault. The Phillips kids have had to learn how to disarm, avoid, and escape their mother to protect themselves and one another. In the words of McCrary’s 9-year-old narrator, the world of 1970s rural America bursts forth in vivid color. It’s a whirl of wondrous adventures and escapism told in loosely connected vignettes. Recurring themes include the harrowing reality of the mother’s illness and the intergenerational pain that plagues her family. Through assorted, third-person flashbacks to her mother’s upbringing in Nazi Germany, McCrary attempts, with mixed success, to paint a fuller picture of Didi and the tragedies of her life. The sections about Didi feel oddly removed, as they lack the specificity of the first-person experiences and rely on distracting, unnecessary injections of German in dialogue. Ultimately, the reader never gets a full sense of Didi’s personality beyond her trauma, nor a deeper understanding of her experience with psychosis. Still, McCrary’s skill is clear in her exploration of grief, neglect, and family loyalty, as when the narrator discusses her father and finds refuge in memories of The Mary Tyler Moore Show: “I knew he was losing his patience with our mother. I also knew that telling our mother to calm down wasn’t going to go down well. I bowed my head and started singing quietly to myself. ‘Who can turn the world on with her smile?’ ”
An uneven novel that offers a whimsical reflection on a free-wheeling youth and a sobering testament of abuse.