Bottomland

January 11, 2016
In her second novel, Hoover (The Quickening) presents a multigenerational family saga. Set in the Iowa plains in the years surrounding World War I, the book tells the story of the Hess family from the perspectives of the patriarch, a German immigrant, and four of his six children. As anti-German sentiment spreads around them and has irreversible impact on each of their lives, the two youngest Hess daughters vanish in the middle of the night. Through shifts in points of view, the story spans the years before, during, and after the war as the central mystery unfolds. Nan, the eldest daughter, struggles to keep the family together after the death of their mother and wonders what role she might have played in her sisters’ disappearance. Her father, Jon Julius, haunted by his past and wondering about its bearing on his present, traces his path since immigrating from Germany, seeking farmland in Iowa, and starting a family. The youngest brother, Lee, recalls his time in the army as he travels through Chicago in search of his missing sisters. Though it sometimes seems like information is obscured in order to maintain the mysterious aspects of the narrative, Hoover’s well-formed characters propel a consistently compelling tale. Agent: Esmond Harmsworth, Zachary Schuster Harmsworth.

An ensemble cast narrates this haunting story about a German-American family at the end of WWI. When the two youngest daughters disappear from the locked bedroom of the family's Iowa farmhouse in the dead of winter, the family's desperate search is thwarted by hostile townspeople and their own dysfunctional family dynamics. This account of desperation and resilience is told in segments by the autocratic father and four of his children, and each portion is performed by a different narrator. Each character has a distinct perspective as the bleak story unfolds. While all five voices are well cast, Robertson Dean provides the finest performance as the patriarch, thanks to his gruff tone and starkly elegant diction. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine