I CAN'T BREATHE!

In this debut novel, horrific health issues and other troubles plague the Bowman family and other residents of the small mining town of Libby, Montana.

In 1958, when 14-year-old Julie Bowman passes by the abandoned Hardin ranch, she recalls her friendship with Tommy Hardin before he and his family developed mysterious coughs and moved away. But she also has a more immediate concern: the physical abuse that she and her sisters suffer at the hands of their mentally ill mother, Betty, an overweight hoarder. (The book then details Betty’s own childhood abuse, both physical and sexual.) Dewey, the girls’ father, is clueless about what’s going on, as he spends most of his time at his music store. That changes, though, when older sister Darlene gets pregnant: Betty’s violent reaction in front of the girl’s boyfriend is hard for Dewey to ignore. Meanwhile, Eric, Dewey’s son from his first marriage, arrives in town, gets a job at the area’s asbestos mine and finds secret documents that reveal the damage that asbestos dust has done to workers and town residents. Other odd doings include hidden children at the Hardin ranch and a popular female choir teacher propositioning one of Julia’s male classmates. By novel’s end, the abused children are rescued through surprising means, and Eric moves forward with his investigations. Debut novelist Bowker, a native of a real-life mining town of the same name, notes at the end that “a great deal of truth often comes to life through fiction.” She provides some heartbreaking tableaux of life in Libby, such as the Hardin children playing with the asbestos dust that litters their home. Yet this town’s asbestos problem takes a rather surprising back seat to Bowker’s engulfing, powerful story of Betty’s abuse. These and other competing plot threads occasionally threaten to overwhelm the narrative, but the story gains clarity and momentum in its concluding chapters and almost always, sadly, has the ring of truth. In an afterword, Bowker announces a planned sequel to this fascinating, ultimately absorbing tale.

A multilayered melodrama with a documentarylike feel.