Synopsis
Phil Doucet, a widower who needs a heart transplant, and Louise, a sixteen-year-old runaway meet under extraordinary circumstances in the American west
Reviews
Freeman's novels ( The Chinchilla Farm ) have grace, style and subtlety--and something more: a candid, unsentimental view of human relationships that nevertheless confirms the redemptive power of love. In an economically depressed rural community in Idaho, an unlikely pair comes together. Retired carpenter and widower Phil Doucet has been saved from death by a transplanted heart, which by bizarre coincidence came from the body of his beloved teenage grandson, killed in a car crash. Struggling with grief and guilt, Phil takes in 16-year-old waif Louise Matthews, on the run from her neo-Nazi stepfather. Louise has had an abortion and an affair with a long-distance truck driver by the time she manipulates herself into Phil's home. In a skillful touch, Freeman paints Louise as immature, surly and truculent; because her behavior is vulgar, her appearance trashy and her language foul, Louise is particularly unappealing. Essentially, however, she is desperately frightened. Phil, whose doctor has proclaimed him "set for life," wonders what kind of life Louise is set for, and performs a brave act of compassion that helps him cope with the loss of his grandson. Freeman is equally adept at portraying the tensions and bonds of family life and the beauty and ugliness of nature in its seasons. If the narrative sometimes glides too easily over some complex issues, it rises to a credible and emotionally and intellectually satisfying resolution.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
As it did in her first novel (The Chinchilla Farm, 1989), the power of love works again for Freeman's leads, an old man and a teenager, both at odds with their families. Phil Doucet will die unless he gets a new heart; Louise Matthews feels she will die if she spends another minute under her stepfather Ted's roof. The carpenter and the schoolgirl live in the same corner of Idaho, and their paths will cross at the novel's midpoint. Since cancer took his beloved wife, Phil has been deteriorating, in body and soul; his chief support has been his grandson Luke. Then Luke is killed in a car crash, and Phil is persuaded to accept Luke's ``perfect'' heart. The transplant works like a dream, and Phil's doctor glibly asserts he's ``set for life''; but despite feeling years younger, Phil is plagued by guilt and shuts himself away from his two married daughters. As for Louise, stepfather Ted has made her life a living hell, forcing her to join his neo-Nazi cult; terrified he will discover she's pregnant (by a traveling salesman), she hits the road. A sympathetic truck driver pays for her abortion, but she is too fragile and unformed to handle a relationship, and in fleeing Wendall she begs for shelter from a picnicking stranger: Phil. He hears his grandson's voice urging him to take Louise in. She proves a difficult houseguest (``as mutable as the lake'') and at the end, with the sheriff down below, is ready to leap to her death; but Phil convinces his now precious waif that his love will be a bulwark for her. Cloying? Corny? Not in the least. Freeman has built toward the climax so carefully that its great surge of emotion seems the most natural thing on earth; once again, her unsentimental celebration of simple goodness marks her as a writer to be treasured. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Dying from heart disease, retired Idaho carpenter Phil Doucet has resigned himself to the inevitable. When Phil's beloved 16-year-old grandson Luke is declared brain dead following a car wreck, Phil becomes the transplant recipient of the boy's heart. Healthy again and "set for life," as one doctor puts it, Phil finds himself fighting spiritual emptiness. Ultimately, another 16-year-old, Louise, sexually experienced, homeless, and fleeing her white supremacist upbringing, provides Phil with the incentive to accept a fuller life. Neither maudlin nor sensationalistic, this well-written novel is built around the theme of non-sexual love. Strengths include solid character development, a strong sense of the good and bad of life in the small-town West, and a storyline that explores moral issues in a non-didactic fashion. This novel, by the author of The Chinchilla Farm ( LJ 6/15/89) and Family Attractions ( LJ 12/87), is highly recommended for most academic and public libraries.
- James B. Hemesath, Adams State Coll. Lib., Alamosa, Col.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
