Ohio Angels

Parents often try to shield their children from the demons that color their lives, but in many cases, it is only a temporary respite. Hallie Greaves recalls that her mother spent most of her life shut away in her bedroom. Now as she comes back to her childhood home, thinking she can help draw her mother out to a fuller life, she finds that her own concerns and fears of failure must be confronted as well. Norma Lang narrates in an even and introspective tone. Her quiet and steady examination of the corners of Hallie's past and present is appropriately low-key and well tempered. J.E.M. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

May 3, 1999
Nostalgia--the longing for a homecoming--draws the heroine of Chessman's lyrical debut back to the past in an Ohio town where time seems to stand still. When Virginia Greaves takes an overdose of sleeping pills, her daughter Hallie, a painter, comes home for a week of intensive soul searching and resumes a relationship with her childhood friend Rose. Hallie has been living in Brooklyn with her architect husband; a series of miscarriages has left her physically and emotionally drained. Back in her childhood home, she can't escape memories of her mother's ongoing struggle with depression and the stability she found at Rose's house. Time slips, and Hallie finds herself turning once again to Rose, who is expecting her third child and still living in the house where she grew up, haunted by the ghosts of her dead parents. Telling Hallie's story from several points of view, Chessman allows other characters to reveal their own hidden sadnesses and the sometimes oblique and pervasive effect these have on Hallie's life. Chessman's descriptions of life-altering events like the stillbirth of Virginia's second child (never revealed to Hallie) are passionate and chilling: "I shook like a tree in a hurricane, and I said, Let me hold him, and when they had wrapped him in a blanket and I held him, he shook with me, two creatures in a high wind." The losses suffered by Chessman's characters--greatest among these, the disintegration of married love--throw the emotional progress each makes into sharp relief. With gentle intelligence and the odd yet poetic accuracy of her prose, Chessman brings Hallie to recognize that opening up the chambers of the past is the only way to move on.

November 15, 2004
Hallie's mother suffers from severe depression and has not left her room for months. Her father, a doctor close to retirement, patiently takes on the cooking, shopping, and cleaning. Hallie decides a visit to the Ohio homestead is in order. While home, Hallie reconnects with her childhood friend Rose, who seems to have everything-a loving husband, healthy children, and a big house-and this sets Hallie to thinking. Just before Hallie is to return to New York, her mother takes an overdose of sleeping pills, and Hallie uncovers the secret that lies at the root of her mother's malaise. Chessman captures the inner workings of the mind and the processes by which decisions are made. Her prose, well read by Norma Lana, is thoughtful, and her characters are beautifully constructed. Recommended.-Joanna M. Burkhardt, Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Univ. of Rhode Island, Providence

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