Twenty-five years later, the body is discovered, and Daniela asks Cadie to return to Maple Crest. Dolores swears Cadie to secrecy and, indeed, she never tells anyone, not even Daniela, but the secret destroys their friendship and the guilt never leaves her. For complicated reasons, Cadie, Dolores and the boy from the dock bury the man in the woods – afraid any investigation will bring the Garcia family’s illegal status to light. It transpires that an immigrant farmworker whom Daniela’s family knows has been killed.
One day, as Cadie approaches their book drop-off point, she hears but does not see an argument that ends with a gunshot. His life there with his Uncle Clyde is insanely boring, and they leave him books to read. Their travels take them past the dock of another cabin where a boy their age watches and waves. She and Daniela spend many hours exploring the lake and picking blueberries in distant coves. When Cadie discovers a boat floating on the lake early one morning with no one to claim it, she uncharacteristically seizes it and makes it her own. In New Hampshire, with their expensive false identity papers and new names, Raúl Garcia became an established businessman but he, his wife Dolores and daughter Daniela have never escaped the fear of being discovered and sent to an almost certain death. A decade earlier, they’d come to America from El Salvador as illegal immigrants, fleeing a violent military government which was supported by the United States. Cadie’s parents were artists, and Daniela’s parents, the Garcias, owned the hardware store in the nearby town of Maple Crest. One memorable summer, about 25 years before the present day of the novel, a friendship was forged between two girls living on the shore of a New Hampshire lake. In this case, the story remains uppermost, and the characters themselves embody the (mostly) good impulses.
It isn’t always easy to do that without turning a book into a lecture or consciousness-raising exercise. Debut author Julie Carrick Dalton deserves praise for making concerns about important social issues – climate change and immigration – an integral part of her new novel.
0 kommentar(er)
