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Summary
Summary
Romantic, suspenseful, and utterly compelling, The Second Silence takes us into the breaking heart of Noelle Van Doren, whose only child is snatched from her by her estranged husband, Robert, a powerful real estate developer. As Noelle, Mary, and Charlie, her long-estranged parents, frantically peel away layers of mystery regarding Robert's past, the lives of each begin to change in unexpectedly wrenching ways. For Charlie and Mary, the years apart have made them realize that one's first love is often one's best love, but now new obstacles stand in their way. Noelle is astonished to discover her ability to open her heart to a new love.An engrossing drama, her most suspenseful yet, Eileen Goudge's The Second Silence will keep readers transfixed from beginning to end.
Author Notes
Eileen Goudge was born July 4, 1950 and grew up in the San Francisco bay area. She began writing at the age of eight. At eighteen, she dropped out of college, ran off with a man dodging the draft, and got married. Two years later, she was divorced, with a baby, and had to go on welfare. She decided to become a professional writer, started writing non-stop and managed to sell a few articles. In the early eighties, she was chosen to help launch a new line of teen romances, which became the successful Sweet Valley High series. She now had enough money to end another bad marriage and move to New York City with her two children. She continued to write the Sweet Valley High titles while working on a novel. Her first novel, Garden of Lies, was sold in 1986 to Viking for nearly one million dollars. Since then, she has written over thirty novels for young adults and over ten works of women's fiction. Her other works include Thorns of Truth, The Diary, and Once in a Blue Moon. Her title The Diary is a New York Times bestseller.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In her seventh novel, best-selling Goudge (One Last Dance) delivers every modern cliche required to satisfy readers who like their fiction titillating and predictable. Recovering alcoholic Noelle Van Doren informs her domineering, philandering husband, Robert, that she wants a divorce. Robert is an unscrupulous real estate developer whose deals routinely destroy historical buildings and damage the environment, and he doesn't like rejection. He avenges himself on Noelle by inviting her to dinner at a popular restaurant where he slips a drug into her soda that makes her appear to be drunk. He then snatches their five-year-old daughter, Emma, and embarks on a campaign to discredit Noelle and gain sole custody. Meanwhile, Goudge interweaves the story of Mary and Charlie, Noelle's long-divorced parents. Mary conceived Noelle while still in high school. Though she and Charlie attempted to make a go of their marriage, they were thwarted by family interference. The pair are reunited in the quest to exonerate Noelle of Robert's unfair accusation that she is an unfit mother. The novel's central issues are noble but executed without imagination: power-hungry Robert is the perfect villain; Noelle the passive wife and mother finding the strength to take control of her life; and Mary and Charlie's reignited romance proves that first love is best. Peripheral characters include Noelle's teenage sister, Bronwyn, who is deflowered with care and sensitivity by wrong-side-of-the-tracks Dante, a misunderstood fellow with "a bad-boy smile and bedroom eyes" who's caught up in Robert's evil plan. The narrator's voice alternates between folksy and New Age therapy speak, yielding few surprises in this glorified Harlequin romance. 4-city author tour. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Another grip-the-reader from the popular Goudge (One Last Dance, 1999, etc.), whose melodramas explore contemporary family crises: this time, the plight of three women who must confront the past when a child is seized by her estranged father. The father, Robert Van Doren, is (no surprise) a monster with no redeeming features. The three women are more shaded, and, along with defeating Robert, are capable of change or of admitting error. The story, set in upstate New York, is narrated by Nana Quinn, her daughter Mary Catherine Quinn, and her granddaughter Noelle, whose five-year-old Emma has been snatched by Robert. Far back, Mary married fellow high school senior Charlie Jeffers when she fell pregnant, and while she loved him, couldn't cope with the baby and so went home to mother Nana, who never did approve of Charlie. Nana effectively raised Noelle after Mary divorced Charlie and went to work in New York. Now, a grown-up Noelle, timid and alienated from Mary, by this point a successful business woman, marries the seemingly glamorous Robert, but soon he reveals himself to be manipulative and cruel. Noelle takes up the bottle, is hospitalized, then recovers to bear Emma. When she wants a divorce, though, Robert dopes her drink, accuses her of still being an alcoholic, and, claiming sole custody, seizes Emma. As a newly strong and determined Noelle fights to get her daughter back, Mary comes home to help and finds herself still drawn to Charlie, now a widower and editor of the local paper. Meanwhile, Robert, who has half the county in his pocket, is on a vicious campaign to keep Emma--setting fires, vandalizing Charlie's offices, etc. And when the women begin to suspect his role in a long-ago death and suicide, Robert turns positively murderous. A fast-churning suspenser for Goudge's legion of fans. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Fans will be elated to see the seventh novel in 11 years by Goudge (Thorns of Truth). In a small New York town, Noelle Van Doren struggles to separate from her powerful husband, Robert, and regain custody of the young daughter he's taken from her. Her parents, former schoolmates of Robert who divorced as teenagers, unite in their efforts to help her, as do other family members. New and old loves emerge from the deadly shadow cast by "Mr. Perfect" (i.e., Robert). Goudge delivers romance, a variety of relationships, and suspense in one appealing package. Public libraries of all sizes will need to get this title. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/00.]DRebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
