Posted by Writers Festival on March 26, 2008, 12:33 pm
Message modified by board administrator March 27, 2008, 8:45 am
In the Valley of Refining Fire
Turtle Valley: by Gail Anderson-Dargatz. Knopf Canada; Toronto, Ontario, 2007. (292 pages). Reviewed by Monica Bauer.
Gail Anderson-Dargatz, author of The Cure for Death by Lightning, Recipe for Bees and A Rhinestone Button, returns to the mountains of British Columbia with her fourth novel, Turtle Valley. The story is set in the farming community of the same name, as young wife and mother Kat comes home to her parents’ farm with her “differently abled” husband and young son in tow. They are hastily driven before an encroaching forest fire threatening to immolate the entire area. With evacuation looming, Kat uncovers a secret buried within the recesses of her parents’ marriage while she hurriedly helps her immediate elders pack away their belongings.
Anderson-Dargatz immediately jumps into developing this mystery, laying out the important details within the first few chapters. For many readers the context deepens as it unfolds, given that Kat’s mother is Beth Weeks, the beloved main character from Anderson-Dargatz’s debut novel, The Cure for Death by Lightning. Though readers of Cure know much about the volatile nature of Beth’s childhood and her own parents’ marriage, Kat has no idea. For those of you convinced and anticipating boredom because you already know the demons the Weeks family has been harboring, trust me, there are more to meet. A lot of time has passed since Beth told us her story.
Kat resolves to uncover the details behind the strange disappearance of her grandfather, John, but her threatened surroundings do not make it easy for her to sniff out the clues. Her marriage to husband Ezra slowly dissolves beneath the affects of his stroke six years earlier, further draining an exhausted Kat. Their young son, Jeremy, though in tune with the mystery roaming the farm, is oblivious to the trouble in his parents’ marriage as he vies for their attention. Also tugging metaphorically at the hem of her skirt is Kat’s recently divorced ex-lover, Jude, who lives next door to her parents in the house that once belonged to her great-uncle Valentine, Beth’s mother’s confidant and neighbour in Cure. Throughout the story, the menacing forest fire doggedly threatens to extinguish Kat’s resolve and deplete the resources that remain to find the answers she seeks.
If you have not read Cure, the interwoven connections of Kat’s family may be hard to sort out at first. However, each character’s place in the family, and in the bigger narrative, becomes clear as Kat hammers away at the family secret. Likewise, the parallels between Kat’s life and her grandmother’s are obvious. Both women had husbands prone to angry outbursts, and both engaged in secret love affairs with men living next door. As Kat struggles to navigate her life, the choices her grandmother made, and failed to make, help to decide her own fate.
Turtle Valley is full of its own kind of mystery and intrigue, though it does not keep readers on the edge of their seats the way a Stephen King novel might. Rather, Turtle Valley constantly, yet gently, invites the reader to venture further into the lives and secrets of these complicated and sensitive characters.
Inspired by the “peaceful evacuation” of the 1998 Salmon Arm fire, Anderson-Dargatz’s story includes the intimate, vivid details an author would place in a memoir. From the sometimes-awkward, often-lyrical dialogue that emanates from Ezra uses after his stroke, to Kat’s sister’s small teeth, in desperate need of caps as a consequence of a grinding habit, these details clothe the principal characters in their splendid entirety. The perilous setting draws us deeper into the story, as we watch birds flee the fire-ravaged mountains only to fly straight into windows or hear the haunting jingle of John’s keys in the bushes. We are ghosts haunting the farm as we helplessly watch events unfold.
To Anderson-Dargatz’s credit as a storyteller, Turtle Valley stands on its own without the prequel. Your understanding of the Weeks’ world will not be hindered by not having read Cure. The second book fills the vacuum between the end of Beth’s story and the beginning of her daughter’s. Kat’s discovery unveils all the details needed to absorb the lengthening family saga. Readers of The Cure for Death by Lightning will be curious about what has happened to Beth and her “lightning arm” since she was fifteen years old. Similarly, those introduced to the Weeks family through Turtle Valley will be particularly interested in exploring the world according to Beth, before the family secrets were buried, and before the fire edits the evidence.
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