Some families' secrets are darker than others.
In Judith Henry Wall's latest novel, three sisters bond - and unwittingly put themselves in danger - when they search for the grandmother they never knew. Vanessa, Ellie, and Georgiana learn that their father's mother did not die after childbirth, as they had always been told. A letter found after their father's death, signed "Hattie," reveals that she instead gave the baby to a relative with instructions to never tell the boy who his real mother was or that she was alive. The sisters are shocked and curious. More than sixty years later, would she still be alive? Could they find her? While it occurs to them that Grandma might not want to be found, nothing could have prepared them for what happened next.
Family Secrets has all the elements of a made-for-TV movie: romance, melodrama, danger, tragedy, dirty secrets, wealth, politics, family squabbles, midlife crises, ticking biological clocks, slightly fantastic plotlines, and popular locales - New York, the mountainous American West, the south of France. It features many independent women who overcome obstacles of varying degrees, from Vanessa, an unsatisfied suburban mom bored with her job and her husband, to Myrna, a corporate executive worthy of a primetime soap like Eighties greed-fest Dynasty. And the relationships among all the women in the book are driving forces.
In Judith Henry Wall's latest novel, three sisters bond - and unwittingly put themselves in danger - when they search for the grandmother they never knew. Vanessa, Ellie, and Georgiana learn that their father's mother did not die after childbirth, as they had always been told. A letter found after their father's death, signed "Hattie," reveals that she instead gave the baby to a relative with instructions to never tell the boy who his real mother was or that she was alive. The sisters are shocked and curious. More than sixty years later, would she still be alive? Could they find her? While it occurs to them that Grandma might not want to be found, nothing could have prepared them for what happened next.
Family Secrets has all the elements of a made-for-TV movie: romance, melodrama, danger, tragedy, dirty secrets, wealth, politics, family squabbles, midlife crises, ticking biological clocks, slightly fantastic plotlines, and popular locales - New York, the mountainous American West, the south of France. It features many independent women who overcome obstacles of varying degrees, from Vanessa, an unsatisfied suburban mom bored with her job and her husband, to Myrna, a corporate executive worthy of a primetime soap like Eighties greed-fest Dynasty. And the relationships among all the women in the book are driving forces.
Written in a style more popular than literary, Family Secrets is an enjoyable read, building suspense and, yes, tugging at those emotions now and then. But the plot and the writing are both uneven in spots, sometimes key ones.
Wall shines in telling Hattie's stories, whether Hattie is relaying them to others or simply reliving them in her memory. In an age in which domestic and child abuse is common in novels (and, sadly, in reality), it's refreshing that the adversity Hattie faces comes, largely, from outside of her family rather than from within it; she and her brother have loving parents. But they live in desperate times, and this and other circumstances set her on an unfortunate path.
Wall shines in telling Hattie's stories, whether Hattie is relaying them to others or simply reliving them in her memory. In an age in which domestic and child abuse is common in novels (and, sadly, in reality), it's refreshing that the adversity Hattie faces comes, largely, from outside of her family rather than from within it; she and her brother have loving parents. But they live in desperate times, and this and other circumstances set her on an unfortunate path.
The book also includes some nicely done romantic elements, particularly in Hattie's and Georgiana's stories, and the author weaves a believable sequence of how the sisters track down Hattie, including some time for their real lives to demand attention and delay the search. The characters, though reminiscent of those TV-movie-style roles, do hold interest, in part because there are so many that you're always wondering what they're up to now.
The writing falters when it tends toward the melodramatic (the mountains "brought reverent tears to Vanessa's eyes"), the formal ("we shall talk and send messages often"), the cliché ("it was like something out of a movie"), and the repetitious ("the woman who'd given birth to their father," "the woman who had given birth to their father," "the woman who gave birth to him," "the woman who gave birth to their father," all within five pages).
With its women desperate to change their lives, families pulling together in the face of disaster, and secrets that are dark indeed, Family Secrets fits the bill for readers who like a healthy dose of soap opera in their novels.
The writing falters when it tends toward the melodramatic (the mountains "brought reverent tears to Vanessa's eyes"), the formal ("we shall talk and send messages often"), the cliché ("it was like something out of a movie"), and the repetitious ("the woman who'd given birth to their father," "the woman who had given birth to their father," "the woman who gave birth to him," "the woman who gave birth to their father," all within five pages).
With its women desperate to change their lives, families pulling together in the face of disaster, and secrets that are dark indeed, Family Secrets fits the bill for readers who like a healthy dose of soap opera in their novels.
