Starred review from July 28, 2003
A little girl's body, lying in a field, is the first image in this absorbing, psychologically rich second novel by the Canadian author of the bestselling Fall on Your Knees. Then the focus shifts to the appealing McCarthy family. It's 1962, and Jack, a career officer in the RCAF, has just been assigned to the Centralia air force base in Ontario. Jack's wife, Mimi, is a domestic goddess; their children, Mike, 12, and Madeleine, 8, are sweet, loving kids. This is an idyllically happy family, but its fate will be threatened by a secret mission Jack undertakes to watch over a defector from Soviet Russia, who will eventually be smuggled into the U. S. to work on the space program. Jack is an intensely moral, decent guy, so it takes him a while to realize that the man is a former Nazi who commanded slave labor in Peenemünde, where the German rockets were built in an underground cave. Meanwhile, Madeleine is one of several fourth graders who are being molested by their teacher, and one of them winds up dead in that field. McDonald is an expert storyteller who can sustain interest even when the pace is slow, as it is initially, providing an intricate recreation of life on a military base in the 1960s. As the narrative darkens, however, it becomes a chronicle of innocence betrayed. The exquisite irony is that both Madeleine and her father, unbeknownst to each other, are keeping secrets involving the day of the murder. The subtheme is the cynical decision by the guardians of the U.S. space program to shelter Nazi war criminals in order to win the race with the Russians. The finale comes as a thunderclap, rearranging the reader's vision of everything that has gone before. It's a powerful story, delicately layered with complex secrets, told with a masterful command of narrative and a strong moral message. 8-city author tour.
Starred review from September 1, 2003
Canadian playwright MacDonald follows up the best-selling " Fall on Your Knees "(1997), an Oprah Book Club selection, with a sweeping family story that often reads like a thriller. Set during the early sixties on a suburblike Canadian air force base, the novel pays homage to the optimism of the era and also exposes it as a time of dangerous innocence. Madeleine is an exuberant eight-year-old still attached to her stuffed Bugs Bunny. When her creepy new teacher begins keeping her and other girls after school for "exercises," which gradually morph into full-blown sexual abuse, she feels she cannot talk about it because it is so alien to the sunny, wholesome world of her family. Meanwhile, her straight-arrow father, Jack, has been recruited by his revered former flying instructor, who now works for intelligence, to baby-sit an ex-Nazi scientist; Jack is soon faced with a moral dilemma tinged with the cynical overtones of realpolitik. The characters, family dynamics, and time period are all sharply rendered and tightly tied to the overriding theme of innocence betrayed. But perhaps MacDonald's most impressive accomplishment is her uncanny ability, much like Donna Tartt's in " The Little Friend" [BKL S 1 02], to vividly re-create the wonder, humor, and fears of childhood.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)