Susan R. Sloan

Two stars. How nice that it wasn't a one-star like the previous five in a row I've written. SPOILERS. Trigger warnings: domestic violence, drug dealing, child death, child abuse, child neglect, child abandonment, pregnancy complications, homophobia, misogyny, racism, others.

This is a long book. For the first half of the book, I thought it was a stylistic choice that worked. Pages-long narrative passages from different characters' POVs are the bulk of the book. Mostly it's Valerie talking about how much she loves her kids and yearns for a cozy life, but didn't get that. She wanted nine kids, the amount she grew up with, but stopped at five due to an emergency hysterectomy. Five kids alone is a lot. Nine is--(shakes head). Jack, her husband, never wanted any kids. He didn't communicate this to her before they married. He asked her father's permission to marry her when they'd only known each other six weeks. Weeks! Valerie was eighteen and Jack was twenty-five. So they were around the ages my parents were when they got married after dating a year: my mom was nineteen and my dad was twenty-four, and by this point they had two babies. Valerie's dad almost, almost forbade his daughter's marriage. For whatever horribly irresponsible reason, he let them go ahead. My parents' families were each horrified, and my mom's family stopped talking to them both. The circumstances and generations between my parents' marriage (1989) and the two fictional characters (1950s) couldn't have been more different, but I compared them both.

Valerie, at eighteen, is super naive and doesn't know enough about sex to communicate her emotions and needs to Jack. He couldn't care less. It's stated by them both that they barely know each other, yet they married anyway. They constantly misinterpret each other's actions and can't communicate at -all-. It was well-written, but emotionally awful to read. It was a great backdrop to how it affected their behavior. It was filler done right, which is so tricky. This, I thought for the first half of the book. Valerie and Jack, despite being totally different people with wildly different values, stay married for twelve years before any action happens in the book. The action begins at the 45% mark of the ebook edition I read. Jack is a serious creep towards tons of women and despises them. He regularly cheats on Valerie, and blames both her and the women he has sex with. He hits Valerie and his kids repeatedly.

Priscilla, one of the younger of the five kids, falls off the roof trying to avoid a blow from her father. Her death is a tragedy Jack absolves himself of guilt from. Valerie blames herself for it. She understandably develops mental health issues--she has no support system, her priest constantly tells her to stay in her marriage, and therapy is not part of her worldview. She later goes to a sanitarium for a year. Her kids all leave and the book gets boring. She runs her own business, and the book feels too long. She stands up to her husband and I wished it'd happened sooner.… (mere)