Editor’s Introduction

As I reviewed the ten novel openings featured in this issue of Embark, I was struck by an underlying theme, though each opening, as always in our selection process, was chosen on its own merits, independently of the others. That theme is the complexity of the bonds of love, often described as the most powerful emotion humans can experience. Such a little word, love, can hardly encompass that feeling’s ever-changing, many-sided nature, which leads as often to jealousy, grief, and rage as it does to warmth, generosity, and joy. A sobering fact, but one that produces extraordinary novels, as these ten openings demonstrate!

DISSYMMETRY, by Nina Cornyetz, opens with the striking scene of a solitary woman, Claire, seeing an uncanny vision in a peaceful, sunlit snowscape. From there, skillfully guided by Cornyetz as she shifts among an impressive array of prose styles and narrators, the reader is drawn into Claire’s complicated world of family and friends. One dissymmetry in this web lies in the thorny relationship between Claire and her very different sister—a bond filled with bewilderment and frustration, as well as long-lasting loyalty and love.

In Dorothy Ellen Palmer’s delightfully humorous and touching thriller, HOW TO FAIL AT MINDFULNESS, MURDER, AND MATCHMAKING, the bond between siblings is also of vital importance, but this novel’s opening scene shows us the protagonist learning that her beloved but absent twin brother has passed away. As his final gift to her, he has devised an elaborate treasure hunt that will send her deep into their family’s past, as well as out into the world to make new friendships and life-changing discoveries.

Ties with absent relatives are also crucial to DEIRDRE, by Mary Clare O’Grady, a heart-wrenching exploration of similar themes. With marvelously intimate prose, O’Grady introduces us to the protagonist, Deirdre, who was raised in a loving family and now has a grown-up daughter, but can’t shake the disorienting feeling that she was adopted. Her quest to uncover the secret of her birth prompts her to reconnect with her brother, and their unsettling reunion echoes her deeper distress when she finds that her suspicions are correct.

Sometimes bonds with distant relatives can be just as transformative as those in an immediate family. In SUMMER OF SECRETS, Joanne Weck’s riveting and exquisitely atmospheric novel, ten-year-old Cricket is equally fascinated and disturbed by her cousin Will, when he and his sister come to spend the summer of 1953 on the family farm in Pennsylvania. Tensions are rife among their parents, but it’s Will’s daredevil nature that draws Cricket out of her solitary fantasies into a new world of thrills, doubt, and danger.

The love between parents and children is arguably the most painful as well as the most resilient form of love there is. In the opening of Brian Phelps’ remarkably immersive novel LAMPBLACK, we see a painter holding her first art opening in a San Francisco loft. Her dark and troubling paintings, which hint at an unspeakable secret, attract the interest of critics and collectors as well as a terrifying man from her past, but it is her father’s entrance that sparks in the painter an acute mixture of stress, regret, and hope.

Daniel Waters, in ARI, also explores the bond between parents and children, depicting with great tenderness a small, bereaved family: the title character, a feisty five-year-old girl; her autistic father, Dev, who works at Good Will; and her kind-hearted grandmother Fatima, who holds the trio together. All three characters are mourning the devastating recent loss of Ari’s mother, while also rejoicing in the comfort of their time with each other. Though suffused in grief, this is a wonderfully warm portrayal of the positive sides of love.

The torment from a severed bond of love can arise not only from death but from the end of a romantic relationship. Syr Hayati Beker showcases an unusual example of the havoc caused by a break-up in their thoroughly captivating novel DOOR #3, a book narrated, in some sense, by itself, and organized in the style of a choose-your-own-adventure. Add to this mix some quirky friends and apocalyptic climate change, and you have a unique yet profoundly human story, with a charming and headstrong protagonist named Ducky.

Sharon Berg, with vivid precision and memorable wisdom, also examines the challenges and liberation that come when a romance reaches its end, in her novel THE ART OF RESTORATION: A MODEL’S MEMOIR. Elke Brix is a young woman living with her artist boyfriend, Rory, in Toronto in the 1970s. When she gets pregnant by accident and Rory dismissively refuses to consider parenthood, Elke decides to make the frightening leap into self-sufficiency, despite the deep love that has bound the couple together.

In HEART AND SOUL, by Robert Funderburk, a loving couple must navigate not the end of their relationship but its resumption, after the brutal separation of war. Lane Temple has come back from fighting in Korea to live with his wife and children in Louisiana. But in the novel’s unforgettably suspenseful opening, a deadly snake torpedoes through the water of the Atchafalaya Basin toward Lane’s son, swimming near their boat, and symbolizes the menace lurking under the surface for this reunited family.

Howard Marsee’s gripping and gritty novel MURDERS ON THE RIVER AYS also takes place in the American South, in this case Florida. After a chilling scene in which four men are shot, execution-style, on a stretch of railroad outside of town, we meet Nick Robles, an attorney, who will take on the task of investigating the crime. When his client appears, a deftly depicted reprobate estranged from the son who reluctantly pays for Nick’s services, we can see again the fundamental forces of love and anger at work.

Despite the very disparate styles, settings, plots, and protagonists in these ten novels, the bonds and breaks between human beings provide a common element, luring us in. It’s hard not to feel for these books’ characters, to invest in their fears and dreams, and to want to learn more about their tumultuous pasts and unexpected futures. I hope you enjoy perusing them as much as I did!

— Ursula DeYoung

Table of Contents

DOOR #3 – Syr Hayati Beker
THE ART OF RESTORATION: A MODEL’S MEMOIR – Sharon Berg
DISSYMMETRY – Nina Cornyetz
HEART AND SOUL – Robert Funderburk
MURDERS ON THE RIVER AYS – Howard Marsee
DEIRDRE – Mary Clare O’Grady
HOW TO FAIL AT MINDFULNESS, MURDER, AND MATCHMAKING – Dorothy Ellen Palmer
LAMPBLACK – Brian Phelps
ARI – Daniel Waters
SUMMER OF SECRETS – Joanne Weck