The Vigil

Imogene McBride and her daughter, Cora, stop in Agatite, Texas with car trouble, but when Cora disappears without a trace, Imogene waits thirty years in vain for her return

This off-beat tale of an old woman waiting for 30 years on a park bench for her daughter to return is that rara avis, an unsolicited manuscript come to publication. Since we meet Imogene at the end of her self-imposed vigil and are led back to its beginning, there is little tension; since character development is minimal, there is little involvement. Stranded in a small Texas town when her car breaks down, Imogene gives her pretty, 18-year-old daughter Cora a nickel for ice cream and never sees her again. For months, the bench is her home and although hunger forces her to take a job, she manages to return to her post for long hours every day, filling the time by knitting. Never relinquishing hope, she enlists the aid of the sheriff, a widower who finds her appealing and makes a proposal which Imogene construes as a proposition. Because he has asked some sophisticated questions, he learns facts about Cora which her mother refuses to believe and in time uncovers the tragic reason for the girl's disappearance. Most readers, however, will have suspected something of the sort and may close the book puzzled rather than saddened by Imogene's tenacity. February 5
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This perceptive first novel probes the minds of two people, a women whose teenage daughter has disappeared and the county sheriff whose job it is to find her. Cora McBride is last seen entering Pete's Sundries and Drugs in Agatite, Texas. When she fails to return, her mother begins a vigil from a park bench on the courthouse lawn across the streeta vigil which she maintains long after all hope of finding Cora is past. Sheriff Ezra Stone Holmes dev e lops a special affinity for the woman who, over the years, becomes as much a part of his town as the Civil War memorial. The vigil and the relationship between protector and protected are explored in intimate detail in this captivating book by a new Texas writer. Recommended. Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. at Carbondale Lib.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.