She Was

February 11, 2008
Disjointed and anticlimactic, Hallowell’s (The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn
) take on the far-reaching consequences of Vietnam-era protests gone bad addresses big issues but doesn’t quite deliver. Doreen Woods, a successful Colorado dentist, wife and mother, isn’t who she seems. Thirty years earlier, she was Lucy Johansson, a Berkeley student and antiwar radical who went underground (with her older brother, Adam) after a bomb she planted at Columbia University as part of a political group called Fishbone fatally detonated. As Doreen, she keeps her past a secret from her husband, Miles, and teenaged son, Ian, until she’s confronted by Janey Marks, an old Fishbone friend with a grudge: Janey’s husband, Jack, is in jail for explosives possession and Janey is determined to trade Doreen to the FBI for Jack’s release. As Doreen struggles with the decision to come clean or run again, Adam is slowly consumed by multiple sclerosis and is frequently awash in flashbacks to his tour in Vietnam. But for all the anxiety, paranoia and violence, the reading experience is oddly flat.