The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 25 April 2023
by Emily Kiernan
There is a grim tale in this brief but dense novel. The book is a slog for the reader, as if walking through waist-deep water all the way through. Indeed, the book is quite literally dripping in watery metaphor, which drains, seeps, flows and floods from its pages. By two thirds of the way through the book, the reader is looking for the characters to start gathering animals two-by-two. It is fitting for a story that begins in the wet watery reaches of remote coastal Oregon, and only gets more soaked from there, with a tremendous downpour and hints of catastophic flood. All of this echoes the overwhelmed emotional journey of its protagonist, Jane, who is in the midst of fleeing from the scene of disastrous abandonment and abuse. This reader found himself wishing against hope that the author (or anyone, really) has little if any first hand experience of the brutal life from which her protagonist is desperately running. And one can only hope that through the dragging slog of all this water, she can make it out into the dry center of the country where some hope for refuge awaits. The divide of the title (though a watery phrase might have been more fitting) is that between Jane's life as she knows it and life as she hopes (but doubts) it could be. It's a hard read as she drives across the mountains, visits her distant and appallingly selfish mother, fords across the landscape steeped in memories and fears. But the author, too, is gifted with visual and sensory description and metaphor. The book has a unique voice and visceral quality. And there is a lyrial beauty to the prose that just saves it from being too utterly bleak. We want to see her finally make her escape, with the random help of other refugees and outsiders, out in the realm of being lost at sea on the American highway. Worth a read, but pack your galoshes.