CHRYSALIS

In this novel, a cruel father and mid-20th-century CIA experiments ravage a Tennessee family.

Contingency “Gent” Jones is still a boy when his family puts down roots in Bumblebee. In this tiny town, he’s different from most kids his age, and he’s not athletic or good-looking like his popular older brother. Gent nevertheless aspires “to do something that would make him important.” Indeed, his piano skills earn him a spot in a Philadelphia music school, where he falls in love and later marries French singer Meg Stellaire. While his wife is a renowned musician, Gent is better known, sadly, for his short temper and meanness. He, for one, controls everything that Meg and their three kids do, like how much they eat and drink at meals. Gent habitually berates Meg and ruthlessly disciplines the children, directing much of his ire, for whatever reason, at daughter Probity. Around the same time, the CIA yearns for “the perfect spy,” someone who can withstand relentless torture. Its past experiments have entailed drugs, coercion, and sleep deprivation, and Gent seems an ideal recruit for the Company’s latest project. He and others physically and psychologically torture children, including Probity, who’s a mere 4 when it all begins. But Gent, no stranger to violence, goes off-book and escalates things to a point that shakes even the CIA. It’s hardly surprising that such unspeakable acts hurt the Jones family in countless ways for years to come.

Nelson, whose last book was The Healing of Gaia(2015), presents this somber tale in a variety of voices. Probity, for example, relays her story as a wiser, middle-aged woman, while parts of the narrative come from her scared younger self in the 1960s. Likewise, other Jones family members trade off narrating, some born after the novel’s most horrendous events and others no longer alive in the story’s 2015 present day. The prose, though plain, aptly distinguishes the shifting narrators. In the heartbreaking case of Probity’s big brother, Ernie, the 7-year-old sees nothing wrong with their father’s vicious punishments: “We’re bad an’ we deserve it.” In the same vein, Nelson smartly fuses this fictional tale with real-world history, starting with the CIA’s horrifying past human experimentation, like Project Bluebird and MKUltra. Other factual elements enhance the story; Gent convinces himself that his participation in the CIA program is important for national security, having lived through the country’s post–WWII fear of Communists. Similarly, the story unfolds in a U.S. rife with blatant homophobia as well as racial segregation, both of which impact Gent’s life. This uncompromisingly bleak story doesn’t shy away from depicting the torturous acts that Gent and the CIA commit, though it’s never remotely graphic. Regardless, Nelson marks certain chapters to warn readers, who have the option of checking appendices that summarize harsher passages in single sentences. Though the final act boasts a twist or two, it more strongly focuses on how some characters have endured following the worst of the story’s atrocities.

Grim, absorbing historical fiction that explores the lasting impact of torture and abuse.