Out of the Deep I Cry
by Julia Spencer Fleming
She's trying an experiment here and it works. Barely. She's switching back and forth from THEN to NOW and letting us see the events of the past that led to the tangled problems of the present. With careful crafting and superb plotting, she succeeds--sometimes the THEN events are presented before the NOW effects that they explain; sometimes after; but always holding back just enough to keep the suspense moving.
I admire the way she includes tough topics in her stories but doesn't over-simplify them. Vaccinations, autism, loss of livelihood, greed--is greed the right word here? No, not greed exactly, but I can't explain without giving away too much of the plot. It's one thing to want things other people have, but it's a different thing to think you have a right to those things but feel that someone or something is preventing you from acquiring them. It's a feeling of entitlement. Is a feeling of entitlement the root of all evil?
Another thing I love about her writing is the depth of the emotions she lets her characters express. An autistic child's mother's fierce protectiveness; an old woman's grief over long-ago events; a man's self-hatred that extends to all the people he is powerless to protect....
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