From Publishers Weekly
Henley returns with a worthy successor to her first novel, Hummingbird House. The heroine, Ruth Anne Bond, is a woman of 50, living in Indiana; Johnny, her husband of nearly 30 years, is the proprietor of an upscale restaurant. Everything seems picture perfect until devoutly Catholic Ruth Anne learns that their only daughter, Laurel, is a lesbian. While she adjusts to this revelation (she is more upset by the Church's intolerance than by the fact itself), her own secret past catches up with her: she is contacted by Tin, the illegitimate son she conceived with a blind Vietnamese boy when she was a teenager working in a convent in Saigon. The moral dilemmas attendant upon living with such a secret are sensitively treated and readers' sympathies for each of the troubled characters will be fully engaged. Written from the point of view of Ruth Anne, the tale unfolds in her memories as she relives the events resulting from her stay in Vietnam. But she must also focus on her current problems, including marital discord and a violent attack on Laurel and her lover, Oceana. Though the plot moves back and forth in time a great deal, it is enhanced rather than weakened by this strategy. Henley, who is also a poet, balances long, stream-of-consciousness passages with short, potent sentences to wonderful effect, tilling the familiar ground of sexuality and spirituality with originality and grace.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Ruth Anne Bond is a middle-aged, midwestern wife and mother happily settled into the rhythm of her life. She and her husband, Johnny, share romance and strength gained from the love for each other gained over time. Ruth Anne enjoys her work at the town library and local Catholic church. The Vietnam era is but a distant time--a memory for Ruth Anne, who worked at a French convent during the war, and for Johnny, a former American GI and POW. But conflict, like a river current, swiftly moves her life away from the comfortable, quiet existence she loved. Her daughter, Laurel, has announced that she is a lesbian and in love with the cook who works at Johnny's restaurant. And the half-Vietnamese son she left behind has contacted her and wants to meet. The author carefully charts the tumult of emotions that Ruth Anne goes through as she worries about her son, now living in the Midwest, and how to share this secret with her family. Will it wreck her relationship with her husband?
Eileen HardyCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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