Thomas Wolfe said that you can't go home again, but when you
must, there is a price. Rebecca McKenzie left her dysfunctional
family in small-town Ontario and made an investment career for
herself on the West Coast. Then her fairy-tale marriage turned
to dust after her husband's fatal accident.
Now with her mother dead and her father failing, she finds herself
returning after thirty years to the hardscrabble farming area,
on the edge of cottage country and in an economic revival. Encounters
with her brother and sister reveal a bitter history, and she's
tempted to abandon any attempt at reconciliation. Cleaning up,
she discovers her mother's diaries, begun in wartime England
and continuing in her new home in Canada. Instead of a dream,
Janet McKenzie found a nightmare under the hand of a tyrannical
patriarch who abused his wife and drove his son to alcohol. Unable
to stop despite her growing disgust and pity, Rebecca reads on,
learning why her mother turned over her small inheritance to
help her daughter escape the same horror. Meanwhile the disappearance
of a young girl plunges the town of Hope River into chaos and
sets neighbour against neighbour. Could it be connected with
Rebecca's only brother, the black sheep of the family? Or has
he mended his ways with his new marriage? Delany pulls back the
bedcovers in this knife-edged portrayal of a family taking arms
against itself. Her descriptions of the scenic but deadly bush
parallel the danger that lies under the surface of a community.
Characters alive with sins and sensibility advance the plot while
pages turn in the diary. Rebecca, hardened in her own ways, holds
the key to redemption. With her faithful dog Sampson by her side,
she battles personal doubts and inadequacies. Delany's fresh,
lyrical prose illuminates each paragraph. The evocative title
comes from a scene in a dark basement. "I leaned up against
the freezer and shone the flashlight into Sampson's eyes. She
didn't like it and snapped her jaws to scare the light away." Delany
is as deft at animal psychology as she is with human behaviour.
With mature themes, a matchless historical vision, and a window
on the soul, this novel establishes her as a force in Canadian
fiction.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Lou Allin is the author of the Belle Palmer mystery series, set in
the Nickel Capital. Her novels Northern Winters are Murder, Blackflies are Murder,
Bush Poodles are Murder, and Murder, Eh? are all published
by RendezVous Press in Toronto.
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