Amy Q. Barker’s novel MAPLEWOOD is a heartfelt, emotionally resonant journey.
I received a request from Amy Q. Barker asking if I would review her novel MAPLEWOOD, and since I live on a different (East) Maplewood Ave., of course I had to agree. Barker’s novel is a heartfelt, emotionally resonant journey with 38-year-old widow Amanda through horror, heartbreak, and slow healing into a renewed life.
Amanda receives a call while on vacation telling her to watch the TV news, and she is shocked to see that the Indianapolis 500 race, where her husband and stepson are spectators, has been bombed. Then she learns that they were both killed. Amanda and her husband Shawn had a happy though somewhat confining marriage, and it takes her two years of therapy before she can even tackle moving out of the fog of grief. She’s persuaded to move back to her hometown and the house where she grew up on Maplewood Ave. The story shifts back and forth in time from the early grief years to the “present” as Amanda creates a new life. The shifts work well, especially because the sadness and difficulty of the grief scenes would be a lot to take without breaks. The later part of the novel moves into steady growth toward fulfilment and joy.
Barker does a terrific job of fleshing out Amanda’s emotional journey, and the story is so well grounded in detail that it could be a guidebook for recovery from such shocking loss and grief. I hadn’t known that much about survivors of such mass violence events, and it was enlightening. Amanda’s later interactions with family and old and new friends is also grounded in warmth and detail, with the feeling of a return to comfortable roots, invoking nostalgia for small-town values (which may or may not exist for most of us). The outdoor settings were particular appealing, with an abundance of sensory detail to anchor the story.
I was rooting for Amanda to break through into the light, and happy that she found creative ways to move forward with a new job and much more. I do have to say that the genre of women’s fiction is not my usual reading, and I would have enjoyed a tighter pacing and perhaps more friction between some characters in the later part of the novel, to keep the challenges pulling me with more tension. But all in all, an enjoyable visit to Maplewood.
*****
You will find The Rambling Writer’s travel blog posts and book reviews at www.sarastamey.com , where you can sign up for her newsletter. Sara’s latest novel from Book View Café is Pause, a First Place winner of the Chanticleer Somerset Award and an International Pulpwood Queens Book Club selection. “A must-read novel about friendship, love, and killer hot flashes.” (Mindy Klasky).
