The Good Daughter

November 21, 2016
At the start of this convoluted novel from Burt (Remember Mia), 33-year-old Dahlia Waller finds an unidentified woman lying comatose in the woods near the home she shares with her mentally unstable mother in Aurora, Tex. The experience inspires Dahlia to dig into the mysteries of her own past, including the absence of her father, the nomadic nature of her childhood, and her mother’s aversion to paperwork. When Dahlia discovers an abandoned farm that’s been deeded to her mother and on which three bodies are buried, she demands answers. Her mother supplies nothing but stories regarding strangers, however, leaving Dahlia to wonder whether she’ll ever know the truth about her family and their history. Burt dooms an intriguing premise with arbitrary plotting, glacial pacing, and characters that lack depth and verisimilitude. Supernatural elements introduced early in the tale hint at magic that never comes to pass, and the Jane Doe story line has so little to do with the rest of the book that it feels like an afterthought .

December 1, 2016
Secrets gain power the longer they are held, and there are twisted secrets aplenty in Burt's (Remembering Mia, 2015) second novel--a lifetime of them.Burt shares Dahlia Waller's past through a patchwork of her memories as the adult Dahlia struggles to uncover the secrets she knows her mother harbors--why couldn't Dahlia go to school or play with other kids? Why did they pack up and run in the middle of the night? Why was her mother eternally vigilant? Dahlia and her mother, Memphis, spend Dahlia's childhood as transients, living in trailer parks and seedy motels as they flee across Texas and New Mexico to California. They eventually return to their Texas roots, but when she's old enough, Dahlia, always at odds with her mother, moves away. When she returns years later, she upsets the uneasy peace her mother had found. Back at home she's caught in a whirlwind of emotions, memories she can't place, strange visions, and an odd confluence of events. Her mother's declining mental function galvanizes Dahlia's determination to get to the bottom of the mystery that is her life. Burt knows how to propel a strongly character-driven novel forward, using intrigue, mystery, plot twists, and rich--sometimes grisly--sensory imagery. Her insightful ability to make the turmoil within Memphis and Dahlia visible and believable makes for strong female characters who are nevertheless flawed and somewhat unreliable narrators. The look into their inner chaos is both fascinating and unsettling and speaks to the strength of the human will to survive even under the most adverse conditions. Burt's tale captivates to the bitter end, by which time "everything that was done in the dark has come into the light."

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