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Summary
Summary
One morning in Verra, a town nestled into the hillsides of West Virginia, the young Myrthen Bergmann is playing tug-of-war with her twin, when her sister is killed. Unable to accept her own guilt, Myrthen excludes herself from all forms of friendship and affection and begins a twisted, haunted life dedicated to God. Meanwhile, her neighbour Alta Krol longs to be an artist even as her days are taken up caring for her widowed father and siblings. Everything changes when Myrthen marries the man Alta loves.
Author Notes
Chris Cander graduated from the Honors College at the University of Houston, in the city where she was raised and still lives, with her husband, daughter, and son. For seven years she has been a writer-in-residence for Writers in the Schools there. She serves on the Inprint advisory board and stewards several Little Free Libraries in her community. Her first novel, 11 Stories , won the Independent Publisher Gold Medal for Popular Fiction. Whisper Hollow was long-listed for the Great Santini Fiction Prize by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. Her most recent novel, The Weight of the Piano , was a USA Today bestseller.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Cander's follow-up to 2013's 11 Stories is inextricably rooted in West Virginia coal country-the rough locale that determines and intertwines her characters' fates. The obligation-vs.-love plot is divided into two parts: the first half introduces two women, Myrthen, a beauty with an unsettling dark streak who devotes herself to God after her twin sister's death, and Alta, a housewife with an artist's soul. Cander closely tracks how Myrthen's and Alta's romantic decisions unknowingly complicate each other's lives in the lead-up to a tragic incident that bisects the novel. Picking up their story 17 years later, Cander then homes in on Lidia, a young mother who meets good-witch Alta and bad-witch Myrthen. It reads like standard smalltown dramatic fare-that is, until a paranormal twist: Lidia's son develops uncanny foresight. Cander's exploration of these promising interpersonal dynamics is encumbered by cliché, inconsistencies of structure and character, and an awkwardly rigid chronological frame, but she admirably captures the lack of choice that men and women have in rural West Virginia. "It's called a 'mine' for a reason," one character states. "'Cause everybody's working to support their own. I'll be working to support mine." (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Cander's fourth novel, following her award-winning 11 Stories (2013), spans 53 years and highlights key personal events in the lives of residents in a West Virginia mining town. When a six-year-old girl dies in a mishap, her twin sister, Mythren, turns repressed guilt into religious zeal that poisons her life and those of other townspeople. Years later, Alta Krol becomes unknowingly bound to Mythren by virtue of loving the man Mythren marries, and by entering her own ill-fated marriage at the same church, on the same day. Yet Alta's tale is one of triumph a life of familial devotion and feminine strength that is reflected in a young woman named Lidia, with whom she forms a profound friendship years later. Cander superbly envisions the town, its residents' dynamics, and the early twentieth-century immigrant experience. Although Mythren's narrative turns a bit too gothic, Cander rewards the reader with Alta and Lidia, well-developed, believable characters whose mental fortitude and capacity to love linger in the reader's mind long after the last page.--St. John, Janet Copyright 2015 Booklist
Kirkus Review
Verra, West Virginia, is the setting of this sweeping novel, in which first- and second-generation immigrants with coal-stained hands and blackened lungs forge new lives for their growing families amid secrets that run as deep and dark as the coal mines.Between the years 1916 and 1969, Alta Krol and Myrthen Bergmann encounter each other only a few times. Little do they realize their lives are as intertwined as a wreath made from the thin branches of a myrtle tree. Alta is driven by artistic passion, her love for Myrthen's husband and a dream to flee the hills of Appalachia. "She'd never been to Florida, or anywhere but where she was right then, in a lackluster coal-mining town with mountains like arms around her, always squeezing. Every day of all of her thirty-eight years had been spent in a town that, at its greatest density, contained only a little more than seven thousand people." Religious fervor, a desire to extricate herself from her loveless marriage and a maniacal ambition to become a nun drive Myrthen. "It seemed Heaven was the only place she might find love; none of her relationships with the living had turned out particularly well." A devastating mine explosion buries their sins and the burdens of their shame, until many years later, when the 3-year-old town prophet, Gabriel, unearths them, providing both Alta and Myrthen, at long last, reckoning and redemption. Cander (11 Stories, 2013, etc.) divinely delves into multiple points of view, crafting a collage of vibrant, layered characters while charting six decades of poignant, precise moments. A distinctive novel that sublimely measures the distressed though determined heartbeat of a small mountain community. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Verra, a small coal-mining town in West Virginia where girls are pressured to marry young and men are expected to work in the mine, is populated by the discontented and unfulfilled. Myrthen is fixated on becoming a nun but must marry John; meanwhile, Alta accepts the first suitor who asks for her hand, incapable of imagining anything better for herself. Tangled lives, disappointments, vengeful acts, and Myrthen's delusions of self-righteousness lead to tragedy for this sad enclave. A generation later, guilt and suspicions resurface, centered on the precocious child named Gabriel. Verdict Spare, elegant writing by the author of 11 Stories evokes a bleak atmosphere and creates a smooth, compelling narrative, yet the story conforms to melodrama and never gets as gritty as it promises. The abundance of foreboding and tension will please some readers; for others, it will mean the plot points are predictable. Readers may find it hard to connect to the characters, who are somewhat wooden; the heavy and unconvincing dialog (at times) doesn't help. Still, much of the prose is so outstanding, this writer is clearly gifted. Give this literary, plot-driven novel to those who enjoy the West Virginia setting and who like a gentle handling of their tragedies.-Sonia Reppe, Stickney-Forest View P.L., IL © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Myrthen looked down, seeing only what the lightning allowed--her mother, rocking her limp twin. She looked like she did when Ruth couldn't fall easily asleep. Outside, the thunder gnashed and roared. Ruth was scared of thunder. Yes, she didn't like the thunder or the rain or the dark. Mama was comforting her because she was scared, and she should go down and get her doll and give it to Ruth because it would make her feel better, wouldn't it Ruth? It was so dark outside, shepherds take warning, it was probably almost bedtime and she wasn't hungry so she must have eaten and it was probably time to go to sleep. "Mama, I'll get our bed ready," Myrthen called quietly down to her mother, who was still rocking, rocking with knees bleeding into the spill of blood where Ruth had fallen. Ruth looked so tired, they were both so very very tired, and Myrthen thought she should go and get their bed ready before it was past their bedtime and she heard the door begin to open--Papa's home--and she didn't want to be caught up late, it was so dark and Ruth was already fast asleep, so she ran, quickly, quietly to their room and pulled back the covers and climbed inside, and moved all the way to the wall so that Ruth would have enough room when her mother brought her sleeping body in. She closed her eyes and promised God that when her mother finished her doll that night after the canning was done, she would give it and all the buttons to Ruthie. Excerpted from Whisper Hollow by Chris Cander All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
