Eden falls and secrets spill like blood

"Secrets of Eden," by Chris Bohjalian. Shaye Areheart Books. 2010. 370 pp. $25.By Deirdre Parker Smith

dp1@salisburypost.com

Chris Bohjalian's latest book, "Secrets of Eden," is a taut story about the consequences of domestic violence with a subplot about faith.

A deceptively easy read, "Secrets" spills a lot of rose-colored truths, half-truths, lies and calculated duplicities.

It begins with Alice Hayward's baptism in a small pond in Haverill, Vt., and her death later that day.

It's told by the Rev. Stephen Drew, her pastor; Heather Laurent, a writer and expert on angels; Catherine Benincasa, a state's attorney; and Katie Hayward, Alice's 15-year-old daughter.

This is where another deception comes into play — by telling the story through four different perspectives, Bohjalian never provides that omniscient viewpoint, the long look from a far distance that gives the reader an inside track.

He's tricky, letting us into the minds of these four people — but never hinting at what or who to believe.

And there's the intrigue about this novel.

Stephen feels overwhelming guilt over Alice's death. He knows her abusive husband, George, was likely to be upset about the baptism. The one word Alice says after the baptism, "There," haunts him — it was an indication, he thinks, that she was ready to die, expected to die soon.

He's so overwhelmed he loses his faith. His fight-or-flight instinct kicks in and he's out of the minister business.

As he despairs (he gets a bit whiny), he meets the beautiful, if odd, Heather, author of two books about angels, "A Sacred While" and "Angels and Aurascapes."

She's been on a book tour and comes to Haverill when she reads that George has strangled his wife Alice to death and then shot himself.

Heather's father shot her mother, then hanged himself, when Heather was about the same age as Katie is now. She's mesmerized.

She ends up talking with Stephen about the case and his crisis of faith.

Stephen says to her, " '... I'd come to realize that I didn't know a bloody thing about prayer — at least not anything useful.When I needed to find the Lord most desperately, I hadn't a clue where to begin.'

" 'Can you tell me why,' Heather was asking. 'A minister must have a reason to stop praying.'

" 'I was no longer confident that anyone was listening.' "

Stephen and Heather engage in a brief affair — she's trying to restore his aura and reacquaint him with his angels.

He seems to be practicing Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing."

It's here that Stephen comes across patrician and distant, a little less than human, a little calculating.

Bohjalian makes Heather a character who breathes different air, operating on an alternate plane. Her faith in angels is eventually explained, and it traces back to her parents' deaths, as do most of her beliefs and actions.

Heather's damaged older sister, Amanda, becomes part of the story, along with Amanda's partner, Norman, a super-sensitive artist who carves lifelike wooden birds of prey — and something that looks like an osprey with angel's wings.

Those two characters, the emaciated woman and ex-con drug addict, are ripe for a story of their own.

When no-nonsense Catherine Benincasa takes her turn telling the story, it's just the facts, ma'am. Easier said than done. Facts are hard to come by in the months after the Haywards' deaths — but suspicion is high that George did not kill himself. It looks like someone else held that gun.

Catherine has a very human side, watching lovingly over her two small boys and wondering about what will happen to poor Katie.

But no matter how hard she and her detectives dig, no matter how much information they collect, evidence is elusive — much of it having been scrubbed away the day after the seeming murder-suicide by helpful parishioners.

Katie appears, through other's eyes, as a mature young woman practicing a little rebellion — sure to annoy her controlling, angry father.

It's only later, when Katie tells her story that we learn she loathed the man.

Bohjalian plays out clues like a man lowering a knotted rope into the water to check its depth.

He manages to make Stephen likeable, for a while. Heather, who's over the top with the angel thing, is, nevertheless, no fool. Catherine is in control — yet out of options and Katie, well, Katie is in control, too, very much in control.

The author's descriptions of domestic abuse come from research — much of which he did for 2007's "The Double Bind." After that book, women asked him how he knew their stories.

Bohjalian is a very sympathetic and empathetic writer. He understands emotions and isn't afraid to feel them as he writes. He's a good listener in his research.

As with "Skeletons at the Feast," Bohjalian immerses readers into a place and time. This novel is almost like one of those cozy mysteries — minus the warm, fuzzy resolution.

This one is a painfully familiar story told from varied perspectives. It is ripe for discussion, debate and dissection.