Scare the Light Away

February 21, 2005
Well-crafted storytelling and an evocative setting make for a rewarding debut from Canadian newcomer Delany. Prodigal daughter Rebecca McKenzie, a widow and thriving Vancouver executive, returns to Hope River, her suffocating Ontario hometown, for the first time in 30 years, to attend the funeral of her mother, the only family member from whom she's not estranged. While she stays tethered via the phone lines to her office, she struggles to resolve old grudges with her older siblings, further complicated by her brother's possible involvement with a young woman's disappearance. The extra time at home with her seemingly forlorn father reacquaints her with her family in the present; 60 years of her mother's diaries give her a chance to see that things in Hope River aren't how she remembers them and possibly were never really what she thought they were. The diary narrative, presented in alternating chapters, is especially poignant, chronicling the hard life of a young English war bride trapped in the isolation of Canada, where her new father-in-law is as cold and vicious as the winters. The only drawback is the secondary characters—cartoonish villains and too-good-to-be-true allies—who detract from Delany's otherwise skillful and layered depictions.

February 15, 2005
Delany delivers an outstanding debut novel that explores the good, the bad, and the ugly of family relationships. Granted, in the case of Rebecca McKenzie's family, it's mostly bad and ugly. A Vancouver business executive, Rebecca returns to her childhood home, the small Canadian town of Hope River, to attend her mother's funeral. Her 30-year absence has done nothing to ingratiate Rebecca with her bitter sister, Shirley, and even more problematic, their brother Jimmy is in trouble--again. A young girl is missing, and the townspeople's rage is focused on ne'er-do-well Jimmy, for whom the girl was working. At first highly skeptical, Rebecca begins to see that Jimmy really has changed and takes steps to protect him from vigilantes when the girl's body is discovered. Meanwhile, Rebecca begins reading her mother's World War II journals and inadvertently causes some oversize skeletons to come tumbling out of the closet. Delany mixes a compelling crime story with a vivid evocation of small-town hostility, revealing in the process that even dysfunctional families have bonds.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)