Julie Weathers, desperately mourning her baby daughter Hedley who died, and mostly unsupported by her increasingly distant husband, makes a leap of desperation, out of the community where she's been teaching, Wedeskyull, New York (in the Catskills). Grabbing an online ad for a job for a K-8 teacher on a remote island off the Maine coast, she applies and, to her own surprise and maybe even new pleasure, snags the position. Her large and friendly dog at her side, she packs for colder weather and prepares to ride across an almost wintry ocean, to meet her new administrators and the children she hopes will restore some purpose to her life.
She's leaving behind her uncle Vern, who unexpectedly stops in to caution her:
"I know something about escape," he said. "It don't always work out like you want it to."
Julie looked at him over the rim of her still-full cup. "What do you mean?"
"I'm sure you've heard the saying," Vern replied. "Wherever you go, there you are. Are you looking to get away from Wedeskyull—or what you think happened here?"
"It did happen here," Julie said. The coffee sizzled in her stomach, and she set her cup on the table with a thwack. "I'm looking to get away from the memories I relive every time I do the same thing in the same place or in the same way that I did it with Hedley." ...
"What happened to your little girl ain't nothing like what I did," Vern said. "You suffered a tragedy nobody could've done anything about. The finest policing, all the integrity in the world, would've had no effect on what happened to Hedley."
Still, Julie knows she needs to leave. But what is she jumping into? Warned that she'll have little ability to communicate with people off the island, or even to leave it from time to time, she can't stop her forward motion and the boat ride she's committed to.
Farther and farther away, smaller and smaller, until their last connection to land was gone, as invisible as if it had never existed at all.
It was the loneliest feeling Julie had experienced in a long time. Knee-buckling, nearly bowling her over, except that of course she'd gone through far worse. She suddenly missed her daughter anew, felt every vacancy Hedley had left, and to which Julie had just added immeasurably by abandoning the last places the baby had inhabited. Stinging spray settled on Julie's face, convincing her that she had made the worst mistake since the day her daughter had been lost. And there was not one thing she could do about it now.
Almost immediately, it's clear the island and its school system are run with an iron and perhaps frightening hand, by a family that's got no boundaries to keep it out of Julie's life and classroom. Her efforts to get to know, teach, and bring healing to her students are rebuffed by a grandmother figure who definitely frightens people, and who's clearly determined to have Julie under her thumb. Risk, threats, and betrayal line up; kids may be the ones most deeply wounded; and even the small return to life of Julie's ability to love another person could be crushed.
From the first page, this thriller speaks to both the heart and the urge for self-protection. Suspense mounts steadily, both human and oceanic, and the storms roll in.
Yet Milchman's loyal readers already know she'll find a way to return both choice and affection to Julie —if the circumstances don't either cause her death, or banish her from the people she's coming to love.
First time reading a book by this author? Lucky you: There are four other titles already in print, and another racing toward publication with Sourcebooks. Milchman has mastered a rare art, merging suspense with a badly needed second chance at life, and lifts up the crime fiction genre to new heights in the process.
PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.
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