PAYBACK

In this novel, a medical student is kidnapped—an experience that proves both emotionally illuminating and harrowing.

Hanna Bloom is a highly motivated overachiever—the valedictorian of her high school class, she’s accepted into Northwestern University’s prestigious seven-year medical program. Her goal is to become a doctor just like her father, Roger, an objective she pursues doggedly to the exclusion of a normal social life—she never bothers to make close friends, and she enters college a virgin. But her ambitious career plans are waylaid unexpectedly when she’s abducted by a woman—she comes to know her only as Mama—who blames Roger for the death of her husband, Charlie. From the beginning, Hanna’s relationship with Mama is terribly complex—on the one hand, the woman is her captor, but on the other hand, she is her “protector.” Mama shields Hanna from the sexual harassment of Luke and Chris, two of her three sons. In a bizarre enactment of what Mama considers biblical morality, she chillingly explains her plan for revenge: “In the Bible it says a tooth for a tooth. Instead of killing you, I’ve decided that you will marry one of my sons and have his children. In that way, my husband’s legacy will continue, and your family and mine will be even.” Hanna chooses Ben, the gentlest of the available options. Goldsmith sensitively examines the peculiar psychological transformation of Hanna, who comes to love Mama and Ben and embrace her new life, as well as the difficulty her parents experience coming to grips with her choices. The author’s writing style is plain and poetically unembellished, even bordering on anodyne. But the plot has a strange power of its own—it is by turns unsettlingly creepy and psychologically captivating. Hanna’s own mental health is tantalizingly presented as an unanswered question—readers are left to decipher her extraordinary decisions, and for that reason, the story will haunt them long after finishing the novel.

A mesmerizing family tale, as compelling as it is artfully bizarre.