An enthralling novel of secrets, second chances, and confronting the past by the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of When I’m Gone.
After a series of devastating losses, Chicago journalist Hannah Williamson has landed in Senatobia, Mississippi, to care for her bedridden grandmother and endure grunt work at a small newspaper. But in cleaning out its archives, Hannah discovers a compelling distraction from her life: a series of rejected articles from the 1930s that illuminate a long-hidden mystery.
The articles, penned by a young woman named Evelyn, are haunting accounts of first love, trauma, and surviving a mysterious shooting that left Evelyn paralyzed at the age of fourteen. The articles stir up more questions than answers, and Hannah becomes consumed by what’s left unsaid. Encouraged by Guy Franklin, a local middle school teacher, Hannah’s investigation into Evelyn’s past becomes more personal with each new reveal. For Hannah, as both a journalist and a woman bearing her own emotional wounds, this is a chance to move forward and bring closure to the story of the girl whose secrets are buried in Senatobia.
What Hannah’s about to discover next is that, even after nearly a century, the truth she’s been looking for still has the power to change lives. Especially her own.
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
My mama always said that you need to let people have whatever fiction makes their life tolerable. And I agree. There’s no use in churning up the past.
This man could make her feel like this— like a shook-up bottle of pop or the time she’d put regular dish soap in the dishwasher in her first apartment instead of dish detergent and the kitchen had flooded with suds.
No one from her father’s family had ever said the word depression or suicide—Mamaw’s tolerable fiction was an accident while Sam was cleaning his firearm, but accidents didn’t usually come with a goodbye note.
He moved out immediately, ignored her calls and texts, and fell into a new life without her like in his life story she was written in pencil and he’d decided to make revisions.
Her accent was thick like it was an elixir she’d swallowed whole and it was coating her throat and mouth.
My Review:
This was my introduction to the wily craft of Emily Bleeker so I had no idea that I was stepping into a book tornado, as fact – her storylines tossed me around but good. The feels were going in every direction but my heart was battered and bruised by her poignant threads concerning Evelyn. It wasn’t until after I had finished reading that I learned the book was a mixture of fact and fiction and Evelyn’s half was not only based on fact, it packed an even more powerful punch as it was close to home.
At various times while reading, my palm itched to give the main character of Hannah more than a few pops to the back of the head for being so tiresome and self-involved; but depression does that, a condition the author truly captured well. Hannah was deeply and realistically flawed, childish, and often annoying, yet her tale was intriguing and I had a hard time not being snappish when my perusal was interrupted.
All of Ms. Bleeker’s characters were well-contrived and held my interest and curiosity. I enjoyed the colorful descriptions and snarky inner musings as Northern Hannah arrogantly appraised those around her in her new transplanted environment of Mississippi while staying with her paternal grandmother. Yet her superior attitude had a false bottom as even if her current position at a small newspaper was beneath her, she also knew it was the only one that would currently have her and she was in danger of losing it with her continual cock-ups.
The writing was perceptively observant and hit upon various social issues old and new, as some problems such as abuse of power and privilege and racism are deeply rooted and most likely will never go away and have unfortunately been resurrected to be far worse than a mere five years ago.
