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Summary
Summary
Raised in a large, loving Irish Catholic family, Valerie O'Connor is a sheltered and innocent young woman who comes of age in the 1950s. When, at age 18, she meets and falls deeply in love with Jack Marsh, a dashing veteran of the Air Force, little does she know that she is about to begin a relationship that is doomed from the start.
Their many years of marriage are filled with Jack's drunken rages followed by morning-after remorse, and scenes of escalating violence witnessed by children too terrified to speak out lest they become Jack's next victims. A powerful story of a marriage begun with the best intentions but cursed by a legacy of violence that will have shocking consequences.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The final retribution of a battered wife is a familiar trope, to which Sloan (Guilt by Association; Act of God) brings an eye for detail: in this bulky novel, she gives a blow-by-blow account of how a woman comes to marry an abuser, how a man turns into an abuser, and how both manage to keep the violence a secret for some 40 years. At 18, smalltown Vermonter Valerie O'Connor marries gorgeous, macho airplane mechanic Jack Marsh and moves with him to Seattle, then California, where she pursues her dream of raising a large family and he pursues other women. As disappointment turns to anger and need to rage, Jack turns to drink. Valerie bears the brunt of his outbursts though her children do not escape unscathed but she fails to act until Jack's fury focuses on his grandson. Sloan's victim revenge novels draw power from the methodical (some might say relentless) way she guides the reader incident by incident, misstep by misstep, through the lives of her characters. Witnessing intimate moments in the newlyweds' bed, or the drug-addled thoughts of a grieving mother, the reader knows what Valerie must do long before she does. If Sloan favors thematic development over language and spontaneity, she makes up for it with her compelling portrait of a troubled family. Agent, Esther Newberg. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Catholic woman chooses homicide over divorce, in a fourth thriller by Sloan (Act of God, 2002, etc.). In 1955, Valerie O'Connor is a naïve Irish-Catholic girl from a large Vermont household where the punishment, while sometimes corporal, is never unjust, at least in her brainwashed view. Despite her father's misgivings, she marries Jack Marsh, a Korean War vet with a future in airline mechanics. Jack's mother died giving birth to him, and his alcoholic father battered a succession of nameless (to Jack) women. Thus Jack won't want children (though he'll get them), and women will be interchangeable. The oblivious Valerie suffers through it all. Jack rapes her on their honeymoon, misinterprets her feeble objections, and lashes out each time she announces a pregnancy, twice endangering the fetus. Still, the faith of her fathers won't permit Val to leave Jack, use birth control, or rat him out over those cracked ribs and life-threatening tumbles. Decades wear on, Jack's career advances, and his outside women proliferate. The family moves from Seattle to a hamlet south of San Francisco, where Valerie makes friends and gets a waitress job she adores. Jack's abuse is sporadic, usually due to bourbon-fueled rage at being dumped by yet another mistress turned off by his technique. When his brutishness causes the death of one of his and Valerie's children, the others plot their escape--and Valerie spends the'70s in a sedative fog, nipping at the bourbon herself. Two sons and a daughter walk the wild side, and another becomes a nun. Youngest son Ricky goes into Witness Protection, leaving Valerie with a grandson to raise--and a second chance. By now, the Marshes are in their 60s, and Val has a successful wedding couture business. Just when some hard-won tranquility settles on their abode, another scourge looms: retirement. The idled Jack returns to bourbon and gets what's coming to him, about 400 pages too late. Blistering pace weds us to these stereotyped characters for the duration. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
