The Very Marrow of Our Bones

"How is it that we forget? How do we turn what we know to be true into lies and the lies into new truths"

On a cold day in November, two women go missing. The year is 1967 and the women are Bette Parsons, a married mother of five and the other, Alice McFee, a woman married to a strange man who seems to give everyone the "creeps". The local community fears the worse and the rumor mill has the women abducted by drifters and murdered by angry husbands. No trace of the women have been found and local law enforcement officials can neither find the women nor determine if foul play was involved in their disappearance. There is a local woman, Doris Tenpenny, who sells eggs to the community. She listens to people's secrets all the while keeping a few of her own. She communicates by writing on a piece of paper. People feel safe telling her things but in this case, when questioned by the police, even she has no idea where the women are or if they are even alive.

Bette Parson's ten year old daughter, Lulu Parsons finds a note on the kitchen table which reads "I will not live in a tarpaper shack for the rest of my life . . ." She does not tell anyone in her family about the note and eventually buries it in a field. She keeps her secret (and a couple others) for most of her life and then later, at the age of 50, she learns she is not alone in keeping secrets.

This book could very well be a mystery; and to a small degree it is, but it is also a quiet study on choices. The choices we make to keep a secret, the choices we make out of shame, choices made out of embarrassment, choices made out of desperation, and how those choices can impact not only an individual's life but the lives of those around them.

Lulu lives with her secrets as her life spirals during her childhood and adolescence. She is not really monitored closely as the entire family is dealing with grief and she makes some reckless and dangerous choices. As she becomes an adult, she drifts from one place to the next following work. She is a musician by trade and rarely comes home but finally, after a tragedy, she comes home to face the truth.

This book is a quiet book about loss, secrets, finding happiness and moving on. Although most of the books focus is on Lulu and Doris, the other characters in the book are significant as well. Through them we learn about life in this quiet town, how people deal with loss and grief. How one person's actions can have a resounding effect on the lives of others. Atmospheric and thoughtful, this book is a character study on childhood attachments, secrets, loss, love, pain, grief and family.

So where are the missing women? Are they alive? Are the dead? One will need to read the book to find the answers to those questions.

**There is molestation in the book which may serve as a trigger for some. The molestation is not graphic but still may upset some.

I received a copy of this book from ECW Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for making this book available.

Ripping read from a first-time novelist! Lulu Parsons' mom went missing in 1967, along with another lady from their rural British Columbian neighborhood, the year Lulu was ten. There is an artful dissonance to the light and folksy way this story is delivered, and the extreme trauma and taboo content it is based on. When Bette Parsons and Alice McFee disappeared, husbands Aloysius McFee and Wally Parsons and all the latter's kids were abandoned: Geordie, Trevor, twins Alan and Ambrose, along with Lulu. Chapters of this mystery are alternatingly told from Lulu's perspective, and that of Doris Tenpenny, a mute but erudite local egg seller.

Too many peripheral characters made it difficult to keep track of the many core characters actually essential to the plot. For example, after Doris and her father came across Gregory Osmond being arrested by his three childhood friends (Martin Currie, Les Webster, and Peter Babiak) for murdering his family, little Shannon Ogg greeted him "as if to say to her friend's big brother, Gregory, what are you doing in the back of a police car?" I wasted so much time wondering about and searching for relevance of a relationship between Ogg and Osmond siblings, where none of these names but Doris and her father's really ended up mattering for the rest of the book. I loved the characters and most of the story, but ended up feeling undone by the tumultuous ending that felt more like a cliff-hanger than a conclusion. If I try to imagine what an actual ending would look like, I can't see resolution for the icky parallel between the mother-son kiss and father-daughter romance. But if Higdon is genius enough to craft it, I'll buy it and gladly read it!

'We each had our defenses, Mum and I. Mine was solitude. She didn’t stay around long enough for me to know what hers was.'

November spawns a mystery in the working class town on Fraser River when two women disappear. Bette Parsons and Alice McFee have gone, one has left behind a letter that only Lulu, her daughter, will read, evidence she chooses to bury. ” I will not live in a tarpaper shack for the rest of my life . . .” Did Bette leave her five children behind by choice, or did something sinister happen? And what of Alice, married to a strange man? How are they connected, is it possible two women dissapear at the same time and aren’t connected? Lulu seems set up for a life of terrible secrets, and choices that can be ruinous. What does the letter matter? Her mother is gone either way. She remembers laundry set on fire, loud whispers and her mother’s mounting frustration caring for her special, sweet brother Geordie. Geordie is the sweet spot in the novel, the ache. There was an abyss of suffering inside her mother, one that maybe Lulu could feel but not quite wrap her mind around. Did she meet a terrible end, or simply decide to leave her life? That is the burning question, the haunting misery that will remain unanswered for many years. Local egg seller Doris Tenpenny knows plenty about everyone in town, with her quiet, unique nature people can’t help but confide in her. Is it because she communicates by writing on paper? Is it the simplicity of her silence that gives others the freedom and comfort to unload? Just what does she know about the two missing women?

Doris doesn’t confide things when she should, vital things. Maybe Lulu suffers for it, as much as Doris. Motherless Lulu runs free as she grows up and gets involved in things no child should. Getting into the car with Mr. McFee, “Aloysius” will be just as life changing as her mother’s vanishing. The relationship doesn’t sit well with Doris who is witness to the ‘adventures’ between the two. “She is the stranger with whom everyone shares his life story, even the most pitiable details. Their confessions will go no further, of that they are sure.” Some things shouldn’t remain hidden, and poor Lulu seems to be surrounded by adults that are blinded by their grief and longing for what’s long gone (like her father’s longing for her mother) or women not made for mothering like her aunt Kat, far too fancy for this small town. Doris can’t save anyone. “Doris knows something is wrong with her brain.” Yet, Doris has an uncomfortable feeling, an awareness that doesn’t bode well for Lulu. Doris sees colors, she is also very perceptive when it comes to other people and their emotional state, she is a hard worker, there is a rhythm to her life that works. But she has known trauma too.

Through this entire novel there are lies people tell themselves, secrets kept for others, shame, guilt and when there is a discovery decades later it is time Lulu begins to realize she isn’t the only human wreckage. Innocence seems impossible, everyone in this novel loses more than just physical connections to loved ones. Not knowing is just as torturous as knowing too much, and I am not strictly speaking about knowing what happened. I mean knowing ‘adult’ things too soon. There is tragedy in the direction people take, and it touches everyone. Sometimes we do wrong and are helpless to stop it- for attention, for escape, there is always a reason why. The reader will know what happened, but I didn’t feel any better for it. The characters are certainly human, and deeply flawed. The only thing that makes sense, is that we don’t often make sense at all. I enjoyed it, I was horrified, uncomfortable, angry at behaviors while also empathizing.

Publication Date: April 3, 2018

ECW Press

This was a very fleshed out character-driven mystery that spans decades and includes a small town with many secrets. The book worked really well and kept my interest. I was surprised as to how well I liked the book despite some of the subject matter. This isn't a flashy, quick paced thriller/mystery. It is more of a story about a small town and a small cast of characters that harbor some dark secrets and have to come to terms with them.

I got a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I managed to get through the whole thing almost without crying. The last part just broke me. I truly enjoyed this book so much. It was sad but also not so sad. Parts are hard to read due to child molestation.

I felt so bad for Bette, the mother who disappeared. If things could only have been different. If only Trevor would not have got her letter. If only...

I felt so sorry for Geordie. He never gave up. He always knew.

Lulu, a child who was taken advantage of. She needed her mom. She needed an adult that would not have her stealing or who would would keep his hands to himself. She went through a lot. As a child and as a teen and adult.

Wally, the husband. I felt so sorry for him. He loved Bette. I believe he loved her more than anything and would have forgiven her anything. Almost anything at least.
Trevor, a troubled young man who did awful things. He had no right to decide everyone’s fate.

Kay, Bette’s sister. She became somewhat of a mother to the children in this sorry. I liked her. I thought she deserved to be happy and have a life.

Doris, a child who never speaks. She went through a lot of things also but also heard all the town gossip and never repeated any of it. She in my opinion was a very smart woman both as a teen and an adult. She had many talents and was so good with the animals. She understood that some had to be killed to live and others were pets to be spoiled. She was kind and generous and loving. She wrote everything she had to say.

Aloysius, I did not like him at all. He was a jerk no matter how caring at times the story tried to make him. I hope he died a terrible death. I just did not like him...

This book touched my heart. I felt sorry for Bette and all her losses. I felt sorry for the family that lost her. I wish there was a sequel to it so I could find out a few things. It would be so good if the author did right a sequel but the ending did fit.

I loved this book from the first page to the last word.

Fascinating story! Something about the story reminded me at first of a novel by Jeanette Walls due to the poverty and isolation. As I continued to read, I began to realize that the story held so many more secrets. I couldn’t wait to learn all of them. The story of Lulu and her family is going to haunt me for a while, I can tell, Enthralling yet melancholy tale of the search for one’s own peace.

How do you live with the consequences of a choice- a bad choice or a good one- is at the root of this well written tale of family torn by the disappearance of two women from a poor community in the late 1960s. It's told in the alternating voices of Lulu, a child who hid the note written by her mother, and Doris, a mute who knows more than most about what really happened in the town. Parts of this are dark dark dark and others intriguing. Lulu's journey through life is not easy and her return to town prompts everything to come out, although I wasn't a fan of the last bit. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

On the same November day in 1967, two women disappear from Fraser Arm, B.C. One of them, Bette Parsons, leaves behind her husband Wally and their five children: Geordie, Alan, Ambrose, Trevor, and Lulu. Lulu, the youngest child and only daughter, discovers a note written by her mother but she tells no one about it. Lacking her mother’s supervision, Lulu is befriended by Aloysius McFee, the husband of the other woman who disappeared. At the age of 18, Lulu leaves her hometown and distances herself from her family. Forty years after her mother’s disappearance, she learns that someone else in her family has kept a secret, one for which “some serious atoning” is required.

This book has several memorable characters. One is the eldest Parson child, Geordie, who is 20 when his mother disappears. He has an intellectual disability but he knows what is most important in life. His loving and cheerful nature inspires the reader to hope that Geordie’s optimism will be rewarded. Another unforgettable character is Doris Tenpenny whose perspective, along with Lulu’s, is given throughout. She is a mute who communicates only through written notes. She closely observes the human and natural world around her and becomes a wise woman.

The book is about secrets and their consequences; because of secrets, people are hurt “to the very marrow of our bones.” In the novel’s opening, we learn one of Lulu’s secrets: the content of a note from her mother. Lulu mentions that until her mother left, “None of us knew about pain. Not the kind that leaves you shattered and speechless.” Though that is not her intention, Lulu’s keeping the note a secret just increases the pain. And that is not the only secret she keeps throughout much of her life. And she is not the only one who has secrets which impact the lives of many others. Because people know Doris cannot easily tell others their secrets, they confide in her; she does indeed keep their secrets, but she also keeps one of her own which she realizes could have saved others from suffering. The conclusion is that “Secrets weigh” and leave people with “too much baggage on the flight [through life].” So much is lost because of secrets. In one case, Lulu suspects a secret “ruined” a person: “In the end, I thought, it had killed him.”

The reader will not leave the book unscathed. At times I was incredibly angry at people’s behaviour and choices though I could also empathize because their choices were made for very understandable reasons; people who are hurt or angry or ashamed or truly desperate do not always make the best decisions. (There is only one character whose behaviour I could not excuse, though that individual does perhaps try to atone in the end.) As expected, sections of the novel are incredibly sad, though there are also comic scenes. And some sections left me squirming in discomfort.

Not all of the reader’s questions are answered by the end. There are some things that one can only speculate about. Though some may disagree, I think the ending is perfect, though it does leave room for a sequel. At times, I wished the point of view of another character were given. A companion novel giving the viewpoint of Wally or Aloysius would be interesting.

Should the author choose to write a sequel or parallel novel, I would definitely read it. On an emotional level, this one got into the very marrow of my bones.

Note: I received a digital ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

A wonderful, character-driven, book with depth and surprising twists. This book is slow moving, but not lagging or uneventful. An emphasis on choices here...living with the ones we make on our own and living with the ones made by others in our life. Great book!