An audio book. There's a search party for Cissy Radley, 7. The town's people are in a line. We jump 30 years to 2005. California. Walker, about 45, secretly on dopamine, is the policeman in a small town. He looks after Star (Cissy's sister) who's about his age and overdoses occasionally. She has two kids - Duchess, 13, whose eyes we see a lot of the action through, and her younger bother, Robin, 5, who she looks after devoted. She's tough. Vincent, an old friend of Walker, is coming out of prison after 30 years. He'd gone in for manslaughter of Cissy (he ran her over - an accident). When he returns, Dark offers to buy his house for a million. Dark is Star's landlord and sleeps with her instead of collecting rent. She sings and waits tables in his shady club. Milton, a creepy butcher, the "neighborhood watch", lives opposite Star.
One night Duchess wakes and realises Star is unconscious outside. Duchess drags her in. She's been drinking and hit. Duchess sneaks out and sets the club alight. Walker thinks she did it (she's shoplifted food before) and talks to her. Dark thinks she did it and talks to her.
Star is murdered in the night, shot. Vincent calls the police from the house. No gun's found.
Police from the big city come in. Walker drives the kids to Montana, the grandfather they never knew. Hal's a farmer. Robin likes the animals. Duchess is constantly rebelling. He teaches her to shoot and drive, makes them go to church. She tries to hurt him, says "I see the shell of a man that's made a decent mess of his own life. He's got no friends and no family, and no one to give a shit when he drops dead. Probably happen in his field, his special fucking land painted in God's colour, he'll lay there till his skin is green, till the oil tanker comes, and the delivery guy sees the crows". Later she begins to soften when she finds out that Hal had tried to contact them often, and Robin's happy.
Walker thinks Vincent is innocent. Vincent insists on an old mutual friend, Martha (Walker's serious girlfriend at school - she had an abortion at 15), to represent him. Out of ideas, Walker threatens a witness at gun-point which seems too far out of character. He discovers that Dark is in trouble with some heavies.
Duchess learns to ride a horse. A black classmate with a deformed hand keeps wanting to be friends. She goes to the school ball with him. When she returns, happy, to the farm that night, Hal's dying, shot. They stay with foster parents, then a children's home. Duchess keeps sabotaging adoption chances that Robin would love. She decides to leave.
Meanwhile Milton's found drowned. Walker fabricates evidence and Vincent goes free. From Robin we learn that Vincent was the killer. Walker shoots Dark in the shoulder as Dark attacks Duchess's school friend. Dark asks to be killed, admitting to Hal's murder. Walker oblidges.
We learn that Hal paid someone in jail to kill Vincent. Vincent killed his attacker.
At the end Duchess returns to kill Vincent, but he kills himself instead. Dark sends her a letter saying that Robin killed their mother while trying to kill Dark. Vincent wanted to take the blame. While he was in prison, their mother had been having conjugal visits for 20 years. He was the children's father, and they'd inherit his big house. At the end Duchess watches Robin for a few hours from a distance, happy that he's happy with his new parents, hoping that he'll manage to keep the truth suppressed.
The language is often figurative - "the sun crawling its arc", etc.
One accident has repercussions for 30 years. Many unlikely events, but a good read.
Other reviews
- Guardian
- Linda Hill
- Gill Chedgey (Here is a writer who understands children, the paradox of their self absorption yet that intuitive compassion that can be diluted as we age.)
- Goodreads
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