Guest Book Review: IN DEFENSE OF GOOD WOMEN

 

When Pamela Grath invited me to review a novel by a local Michigan author, I knew the book would be good. But, as it turns out, In Defense of Good Women, by Marilyn Zimmerman, is remarkably good. In fact, once I started reading this compelling, suspenseful story, I couldn’t put it down. 

 

In Defense of Good Women is a legal thriller that tackles the controversial topic of neonaticide, the killing of an infant within its first twenty-four hours. This fascinating book features strong, complex female characters and an evocative portrait of a coastal town in southeastern Michigan.

 

The lead character, Victoria Stephens, is a smart, accomplished criminal attorney with a twenty-year career. In the small town of Port Huron, she projects a perfect image of success with her Chanel sunglasses, designer shoes, and new Mercedes. At the insistence of a chief circuit judge she has known for years, Victoria reluctantly takes on a seemingly impossible case. 

 

The client, seventeen-year-old Callie Thomas, has been charged with murdering her newborn infant. The baby was drowned in the St. Clair River, hours after being born. Callie insists she is innocent. She does not remember giving birth or even being pregnant, though the DNA evidence is indisputable. Adding to the uproar, Callie is the daughter of a locally prominent Evangelical minister, known for his strident pro-life opinions.

 

As Victoria constructs a defense, she consults a psychologist with expertise on neonaticide syndrome, a kind of dissociation that occurs in women, particularly teenagers, who have been traumatized by their pregnancy. Closely related to temporary insanity, the syndrome is a controversial diagnosis that is not exactly abortion and not exactly infanticide. The woman wants to get rid of the baby after it’s born, and then she’ll block it from her mind, as if the baby never existed. The hypothesis would explain a lot about Callie’s behavior and frame of mind, though the expert admits that the defense may not work in U.S. courts.

 

The story has several unexpected twists that I won’t spoil. But I will say that Zimmerman is brave and even-handed in confronting tough issues related to pregnancy, motherhood, and the expectations that weigh on women facing difficult decisions. She also does a fantastic job of developing her lead characters. Callie is traumatized and reticent, but she’s also sensitive and artistic. And Victoria, even with her Jimmy Choo shoes and diamond wristwatch, is a complicated woman who carries wounds of her own. By its conclusion, the novel resolves the mystery of what happened to the baby and to Callie. But there is a deliberate raggedness to the ending that is startling and thought-provoking.

 

The book effectively captures the ambience of small-town Michigan. The media turmoil, the rumors and judgments, and the intertwining lives are all recognizable and believable. Especially captivating are the descriptions of the cozy cottage Victoria inherited from her father. Constructed by bootleggers during Prohibition on the St. Clair River, the home conjures memories of her parents and has become her sanctuary. 

 

Like most great books, In Defense of Good Women works on several levels. With its crisp pacing, compelling characters, and suspenseful plot, the book would make fabulous beach reading. On a deeper level, it would also be a wonderful choice for a book club seeking meaningful discussion around women’s reproductive health and the right to choose.

 

Thank you, Pamela, for sharing this book—and for all you do to inspire community and introspection in beautiful Northport. And thank you, Marilyn Zimmerman, for writing such an intelligent, entertaining, and timely book. I hope you’re already at work on your next manuscript!

Postscript from your usual blogger: First, thanks to Kristen Rabe for being an excellent guest reviewer! Second, we will be hosting a launch in June for Marilyn’s book—details to be announced when plans are firm.

Book Review: TWO DAYS GONE

Two Days Gone

by Randall Silvis

Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks Landmark, January 2017

Paperback, 384pp, $15.99

The information on the back cover and the first inside page of my ARC categorize Two Days Gone as mystery, but while the story falls into that genre for many reasons, it’s as much a psychological suspense novel or thriller as it is a whodunit. Maybe more so.

Here’s the setup: The wife and two children of a successful fiction writer and college professor, an apparently loving husband and father, have been murdered by having their throats slit, and a third child, the baby, was stabbed to death. Now the writer-professor, Thomas Huston, has gone missing, making him the most logical suspect. Huston, who had lost his own parents to violence, wrote novels with dark undercurrents. Had writing been the only thing keeping a lid on hidden vengeful fantasies? Did Huston finally snap? But why would he kill his own family?

Author Randall Silvis gives us two points of view, that of runaway Huston, eluding police by imagining himself a character in a novel-in-progress, and that of Sergeant Ryan DeMarco, investigator in charge of the manhunt and murder investigation. Early on, we learn that the two men know each other and were probably, before Huston’s dark family tragedy, in the early stages of a friendship important to them both, each sensing in the other a sadness that work could never wholly overcome.

Like Huston, DeMarco too had known tragedy. His young son, his only child, had died in a traffic accident, and his marriage subsequently fell apart, also, as his wife plunged into a shadow life of sexual encounters with strangers. Huston dealt with insomnia by taking walks and drives in the middle of the night, while DeMarco dosed his with Jack Daniels and television. Insomnia was routine for both men. Now there is even less sleep for either one, as Thomas is on the run, desperate, and DeMarco resolved to find the fugitive suspect and bring him in.

Most people who knew him, including DeMarco, have a hard time imagining Huston capable of the crime. If not Huston, though, who could the murderer be? A jealous colleague? Someone from the shady clubs Huston was visiting as research for his new novel? Perhaps his notes for that new novel hold clues?

Huston’s preoccupation with Edgar Allan Poe and Vladimir Nabokov play into his own fiction and thus into the novel in which Huston is a fictional character. How much of Huston is in his books? (How much of Silvis is in Huston? Or DeMarco?) Questions like this, asked by DeMarco and answered thoughtfully by one of Huston’s graduate students, Nathan Briessen, give Two Days Gone another level of complexity and interest for readers who are also writers, as well as complicating the investigation for the chief investigator.

We never know where the next chapter of this taut, suspenseful novel will take us. And what feels like a final chord keeps not being – until, of course, at last it is. I did not stay up all night to read the last page, but I confess I got up early the next morning to finish the gripping story. It is very, very well told.

And now I’m curious about Silvis’s two earlier books, both with Poe themes....