The novel is set in 1986 in the state of Washington “in a small fishing
town a stone’s throw from Canada.” A
police officer, Lewis Côté, finds Vera Gusev’s car abandoned in a parking lot near a
frozen lake at Squire Point. She had
called the police to report finding a young boy in the woods, but neither she
nor a boy can be found. Leo Lucchi takes
his sons Jesse and Dmitri to the lake but when Jesse pulls a cruel prank on his
father, Leo leaves him in the woods for a while to think about what he did
before picking him up. Lewis wants to
find out what happened to Vera. Did Leo
and the boys meet her? Despite their claiming
not to know what happened to Vera, there are suspicions that they are keeping a
secret.
The novel is told from shifting perspectives: Lewis, Jesse, Denny (Vera’s husband), Evelina
(Jesse and Dmitri’s mother), Leo, Dmitri, and Vera. The reader comes to know each of these
characters quite well, including their personalities and their
motivations. Of course, information is
also withheld; it is made obvious that the full truth is not being told: “He could live with that story, with that
version of things” and “’I will keep your secret . . . Because I think it’s the
right thing to do.’”
Guilt and grief are explored.
Denny, for example, suffers from both.
He is consumed by grief because of his wife’s disappearance and by guilt
because his marriage was failing. Lewis
grieves because of his father’s death and feels guilty because he was unable to
help his dad when he was alive. Leo,
divorced from Evelina, knows he was not always the best husband and father and
keeps looking for redemption.
Jesse knows he has not always been a good brother so he determines to
treat Dmitri better.
The book examines justice: does justice
for the dead supersede any duty to the living?
A search for the truth cannot help a deceased victim but may harm the
living. For instance Denny is initially
suspected of knowing something about his wife’s disappearance. The investigation leaves him in even more
torment: “They would investigate every
aspect of his life and marriage, the detectives told him. They would turn him inside out.” So he starts thinking “Maybe she hadn’t
disappeared at all. Maybe he had driven
her away. Maybe he had driven her to
suicide.”
Also explored is the impact of childhood experiences. Lewis often ponders the impact of his
difficult childhood on his life, especially the choices he has made: “the child of a crazy parent spends his whole
life trying to fix the world.” As a
police officer, he thinks that “if a child committed a crime by age twelve, he
could help that child turn things around.
He could have a huge impact on that child’s life. But if that child was fifteen? Forget about it.” Jesse experienced violence at the hands of
his father so when he becomes a parent, Evelina “finds herself watching him
closely when he holds his daughter.
Studying his hands. How tightly they
grip the baby’s little thighs, her little arms. Or did he get all the violence
out of him . . . ?”
A concern shared by several characters is the desire to be a good
parent. Certainly, Lewis wants to be a
good father: “Was that the kind of thing a good parent
would say? . . . He wanted to be a good parent . . He wanted to be.” Evelina wants to be a good mother: “She had read somewhere that after a
separation a parent should not speak ill of the other parent. So she tried to reminisce, as much as she
could with the boys, about Leo’s good qualities.” Even Leo acknowledges that he might need to
take parenting classes.
This is a crime novel, but it is a crime novel with thematic
depth. It leaves the reader wondering
what he/she would do in a similar situation.
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