This short novel is packed with ideas and actions. Actions in the present and feelings and results of actions that reverberate from the past.
The story is told primarily through the first person of Emily, a nurse who works at a for-profit visiting nurse agency in Western Massachusetts. Then in other chapters it switches to the third person voice to be with other characters and witness their movements and thoughts that are out of the view of Emily.
This is an effective mechanism in that it gives us a strong central character to really get to know and pull for while further illuminating the world around her, its people, and their motivations. It is a solid choice that avoids the possible confusion of an alternating first person work.
The story centers around a young woman, 20, pregnant with her second child when only a year ago something terrible happened to her first because of accidental actions related to the tiny local cult she has become a part of. She is under house arrest with an ankle monitor, Emily is her home care nurse, and is increasingly drawn into the young woman's dilemma.
This is a very fine novel. With a tight suspenseful emotionally charged plot.
It is the first novel of an older woman who focused on writing after a career in nursing. That surely is a personal triumph for Meeropol, but would not be enough to draw readers to the work if it were not the outstanding novel that it is.
I will be seeking out her other work published since House Arrest.
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