Unspeakable Things
by Jess Lourey
ISBN:9781542008785
A 2020 release from
Thomas & Mercer
Even today a lot of people think of the Upper Midwest,
Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, as flyover land; as bucolic peaceful farm
country where people live happy lives and all the children are above average.
Like anywhere else, that isn’t entirely true. Darkness lurks in dim corners of
dirt-floor basements, strange creatures walk at night, spirits seem to lurk
around dim corners, and even family life can be questionable.
This novel is a story of one spring and summer in the young life
of Cassie McDowell, a twelve-year old, sensitive and aware girl living with her
troubled family on a small farm on the outskirts of Lilydale, Minnesota. Her
family consists of an older sister, mother and father, a veteran of Viet Nam.
He is a struggling artist who drinks too much and conducts wild and often
strange parties, apparently on an errant whim.
The author’s grasp of the mental processes of young girls,
their shifts in attitudes, seems to this aging reviewer to be spot on. Whether
hiking through the groves or biking down winding rural roads or swimming in the
local creek, Cassie and her companions seem to live the perfect life growing
up. Except
Except there is always something there, something else that
seems dark and menacing; something that dims the hot summer sun and increases
the creaking stair sounds that might be her father coming to her bedroom.
The novel is tense, extremely well written, carefully aimed
at a teen-age audience, yet patently attractive to an adult reader as well. The
author is to be congratulated for obvious talent and gets high marks for the
descriptive passages, the constant forward drive of the plot and the
characters. I would have preferred some expansion of the resolution which seems
a little abrupt. Nevertheless, this reviewer strongly recommends this novel
with no reservations.
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