Rating: WORTHY!
Errata:
"Four shiny black Buick’s" doesn’t need the apostrophe
"...at least FDR. is trying..." FDR isn’t an abbreviation like Dr. or Ms., it's initials, so either it should be simply FDR, which rightly or wrongly is my minimalist preference, or it should be F.D.R.
"nauseas" misspelling of nauseous
"...in his stripped vest..." should be 'striped vest'
"Beat’s me" should be "Beats me"
This novel (of which I got an advance review copy) is set in 1935, the year when Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California, and Harlem had race riots, Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater was completed, and the Dust Bowl hit, Jews lost citizenship in Germany, and the FBI wiped out the Barker gang, the first canned beer was sold and alcoholics anonymous was founded, Lawrence of Arabia died and parking meters were brought into use by Oklahoma city. 1935 - and already there were too many cars!
It’s also set in San Diego, the birthplace of California, home of the largest naval fleet in the world, and takes place during the California Pacific International Exposition. The exposition really took place in 1935, and it did precisely what instigator Frank Drugan hoped it would - it attracted over seven million visitors and brought almost thirty eight million dollars into San Diego's economy at a time when the entire USA was still in a sluggish recovery from 1929. No one knew at the time that the economy would get its biggest boost from the second world war and the USA would become a superpower.
Yes, there was a nudist colony located in the sunken Zoro garden, but it was populated with performers, not actual nudists, and both men and women wore a covering on the lower half of their body, but yes, there was a macaw! Fittingly, this place which housed "pretties", and which brought in more money than any other exhibit at the exposition, is now a butterfly garden, still housing pretties, but much more honest and innocent. In the fictional version, the fenced in nudist colony is populated by real nudists who benefit from the admission price which funds their colony. You could also say they benefit from the exposure - in attracting new members, so to speak.
Author Kelly Romo has taken the real events and woven them with a fictional tale to produce a truly well-written and engaging story about alienated sisters, once close but now torn apart by awful events with which we’re teased until we slowly learn the truth by the half-way point in the novel. Although it’s clear long before then what happened, we never learn all the twisted and intriguing details, which are doled out throughout the second half of the novel. The novel is gorgeously written with all of the important characters sketched sharply, even if briefly. The relationship between Wavey and Addie is complex and beautifully sculpted. It's mirrored in the relationship between Wavey's daughters Rumor and Mary, two girls who are counterparts to their elders, Rumor matching Addie, and Mary matching Wavey, their names, one fairly common and one rare, being switched between the generations and the personalities.
This is very much a woman's story, and is the better for it. Although it isn't first person (and is the better for it!), it's told very much from Addie's PoV, and to a lesser extent, Rumor's. Neither Wavey nor Mary really get their own story, appearing only in relationship - and often very much as a foil - to their respective sister. Indeed Wavey is painted more in hues chosen by her sister and her daughter than ever she is from her own palette. Men appearing in the story are almost universally bad influences or downright bad people. With only two exceptions (and one of those is highly iffy), they are not men to be around, especially not if you're young, female, and defenseless. Even when one appears to be a decent and positive influence, we find his foundation to be as unreliable as the sand on the beach.
Both Wavey and Addie are different women, but strong in their own way. Rumor is a force to be reckoned with, and although younger than Mary, is significantly more mature and self-possessed, very much a catalyst. This story would still have been worth reading without all the secrets and intrigue, but of course without that, the estrangement, which is the spine of this body of work, would have been lacking.
While I loved the novel overall, there was one slight annoyance: Wavey's " fractured blue eyes". It felt like if I read that phrase once, I read it a gazillion times, although it only appeared on maybe eight or ten occasions in one form or another: fractured, splintered, prisms, and so on. Once was more than enough when it isn’t really explained that well. From a reference to cracked ice and to prisms, I took it to mean that they were two or more shades of blue, colored like a kaleidoscope, but pale like ice. The problem as that this wasn't exactly clear to me. I found myself wondering if it was a metaphor. Did it mean that they were sad? Does it mean they fracture light like waves in the ocean, which is where her name came from? Or did her name come from a wave hat? We never learn. Does it mean the eyes were as broken as their owner? That they were cold and impenetrable like glass, and unforgiving? The fact that the sharp description of Wavey's eyes was so vague in meaning made the repeated use of this term all the more irritating, but this was a minor point when compared with the engrossing sweep of the overall story.
Wavey isn't forgiving of Addie's behavior, even though she claims she is, but it’s fine because Addie isn’t forgiving herself either. Wavey doesn’t trust Addie around her kids, believing that her sister was corrupted by her stint in the orphanage, and then more so by her time at the nudist colony. This rejection crushes Addie. Wavey's kids think they have a reasonable handle on things, but they really don’t. Only Wavey knows the whole story, and the question running like a snagged thread through this tale is whether or not these four girls can handle what really happened, bring it all together, and make a new life which includes all of them.
In the end things come together in a pleasant and satisfying way, although not necessarily in a way you might predict for a story like this. I absolutely adored it. Both Addie and Wavey are outstanding characters, but they are not the only ones who leave a mark on you. Addie's friends at the nudist colony are a story in themselves, especially Daisy, who is Addie's roommate, and Daisy's son Sal. There's one other person, who seems to play only a minor role, but whose character is sketched ever more sharply as the story rolls on to a breath catching ending. I was thrilled to read this and recommend it highly. Like one of Wavey's neighbors, who is abruptly turfed out of her bungalow because she can’t make the rent, or like one of the older women who is dismissed from the colony because she's no longer the youthful, healthy crowd-pleasing specimen of femininity she once was, I'll miss the people I'm leaving behind as I move on to the next novel on my list! This is my first Kelly Romo. It will not be my last!
