The Very Marrow of Our Bones

April 9, 2018
Higdon’s debut novel is a finely observed chronicle of two women’s lives. In 1967, in a small town near Vancouver, 10-year-old Lulu Parson’s mother, Bette, and a neighbor go missing. Bette leaves a brief farewell note that Lulu finds and hides. Forty years later, Lulu is shaken when her brother hints that he has his own secret about their mother’s disappearance, but he dies before he can explain. Many tantalizing questions are raised by this opening, but the book turns away from the mystery surrounding the disappearances to focus instead on the consequences: how Bette’s family and community are wounded by loss, and how they heal from it. Bette’s absence haunts Lulu through her adolescence and into her adult life as a touring musician until a death and an unexpected inheritance draw her back home. She becomes close to Doris, a mute neighbor who raises chickens, sells eggs, and keeps the town’s secrets, and they both find peace in tending animals and being close to nature. Answers about the missing women do come, but the path that leads there is unhurried, and this novel will appeal to readers more interested in the journey than the destination.

February 15, 2018
An ambitious debut novel that will make you cry, cringe, and laugh.In 1967, two women--Bette Parsons, the mother of five, and Alice McFee--disappear from a rural town in Canada called Fraser Arm. The scars left by this mystery lay the groundwork for the novel. "Sometimes pain brings people together, helps them to cross the grand abyss of human discord," says Lulu Parsons, one of Bette's children, as she begins narrating the story years later. "Sometimes it's too late." Higdon lovingly excavates the truth behind the women's disappearance, a story buried beneath years of secrecy, trauma, and small-town drama--but does not hesitate to add plenty of salt to the wounds first. There are gaspworthy moments from the beginning to the very last chapter. Though the character count might seem intimidating, Higdon successfully fills Fraser Arm with complex characters who grow and change as the novel unfurls. For example, Doris Tenpenny, the preacher's daughter, who is mute but sees everything, is brilliant and unforgettable ("Apart from wild mushrooms, which are sometimes tricky to identify and occasionally poisonous, Doris thinks wild people are quite similar to wild food--likeable and interesting"). Her observations are key to understanding the rest of the town. For most of the book's length, the perspective pivots between Lulu's first-person narration and Doris' third-person point of view and follows the tale for five decades without being wed to a linear timeline. The reader is quickly drawn into the intimate details of the lives of the town's inhabitants, compassionately crafted and carefully doled out. From shame to sexual abuse to the undermentioned strain of motherhood, this debut novelist boldly takes on a lot. While the absent father is a tired archetype, a sympathetic story of an absent mother is rare.This small-town drama is jam-packed with revelations and sweet portraits that stick.

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