THE CHILDREN'S SECRET

The shooting of an 11-year-old child during a back-to-school party throws the community of Middlebrook, New Hampshire, into a flurry of vitriolic accusations and unlovely posturing.

The irony is that Astrid Carver wasn’t even expected at the party in the first place. Her mother, law professor Priscilla Carver, had not only declined the invitation from schoolmate Bryar Wright’s parents, but urged her friends and neighbors to boycott the event as well because she couldn’t forget the shooting of her rescue dog three years ago by Bryar’s father, border patrol agent Ben Wright. But Astrid defied her mother, sneaked off to the Wrights’ place, and ended up critically wounded by one of the guns Ben stored in his wife’s riding stable. All the other children who were present tell Lt. Mesenberg that they’re too confused and uncertain to say just how Astrid got shot, but that’s because they’ve sworn each other to secrecy about what they all know perfectly well. In the absence of any hard evidence—even the gun and Astrid’s cellphone have gone missing—the field is free for someone to adorn the new mosque architect Ayaan Sayed has designed with the announcement “TERRORISTS GO HOME,” for the neighbors to turn on widowed hunter True Bowen, and especially for Priscilla Carver to mobilize every weapon she can seize against the Wrights. Monroe stokes the fires so effectively as racism, snobbery, and old grudges fly around decorous Middlebrook with the fury of the woes released from Pandora’s box that the cautiously happy ending she eventually summons feels sadly unconvincing.

Think your children couldn’t possibly behave like this? Monroe will have you thinking again.