Women's Fiction

Scare the Light Away

Name: Scare the Light Away
Author: Vicki Delany
ISBN: 9781590589922

by Vicki Delany

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Overview

Recently widowed Rebecca McKenzie, a successful Vancouver businesswoman, returns to small-town Hope River after an absence of 30 years to attend her mother's funeral. Estranged from her father and two older siblings, she's left a brutal childhood and a psychopathic grandfather behind. She expects her visit home to be short. Then she discovers the diaries written by her mother, a British war bride with a young baby who came to Canada to join a husband she scarcely knew, a husband who's family might contain a serial killer. Rebecca (and the reader) find her heart wrung by her mother's story.

Meanwhile, a young girl has gone missing, and the suspicions of the townspeople fall on Rebecca's handsome, charming brother Jimmy. Before long, violence threatens and Rebecca must put aside some long-held grievances to protect Jimmy and find the real killer.

This debut novel will appeal to readers of Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs and Stef Penny's international bestseller and its sequels, evoking admiration, respect, and sympathy for members of The Greatest Generation, both English and Canadian. And amazement at how its members could be isolated from the familiar.

About the Author, Vicki Delany

Having taken early retirement from her job as a systems analyst in the high-pressure financial world, Vicki Delany is settling down to the rural life in bucolic, Prince Edward County, Ontario where she rarely wears a watch.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Well-crafted storytelling and an evocative setting make for a rewarding debut from Canadian newcomer Delany. Prodigal daughter Rebecca McKenzie, a widow and thriving Vancouver executive, returns to Hope River, her suffocating Ontario hometown, for the first time in 30 years, to attend the funeral of her mother, the only family member from whom she's not estranged. While she stays tethered via the phone lines to her office, she struggles to resolve old grudges with her older siblings, further complicated by her brother's possible involvement with a young woman's disappearance. The extra time at home with her seemingly forlorn father reacquaints her with her family in the present; 60 years of her mother's diaries give her a chance to see that things in Hope River aren't how she remembers them and possibly were never really what she thought they were. The diary narrative, presented in alternating chapters, is especially poignant, chronicling the hard life of a young English war bride trapped in the isolation of Canada, where her new father-in-law is as cold and vicious as the winters. The only drawback is the secondary characters-cartoonish villains and too-good-to-be-true allies-who detract from Delany's otherwise skillful and layered depictions. (Mar. 28) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A dysfunctional Canadian family struggles toward redemption. Janet McKenzie's funeral brings Becky, her youngest daughter, home to tiny Hope River for the first time in 30 years. A posh Vancouver banker coping with widowhood by lavishing all her love on her husband's dog (Sampson), Becky, who now prefers to be called Rebecca, must face a plethora of demons: Shirley, her embittered sister; Jimmy, her ex-con brother; Bob, the alcoholic dad whose grief sends him sliding in and out of dementia; and memories of the tyrannical, abusive grandfather who terrorized the whole family. In sorting through her mother's things, Rebecca finds a series of journals recounting every loathsome deed that befell her since coming to Hope River as an English war bride back in 1946. Appalling as some of them were, they pale beside Rebecca's own horror while she's out walking Sampson-finding first the scarf, then the body of missing teenager Jennifer Taylor. When the townsfolk are quick to blame Jimmy, Rebecca, intent on helping him and his wife Aileen, is harassed, brutalized and ultimately forced to violence herself. Not so much reveling in family secrets as insisting that families can overcome them, debut novelist Delany is adept at ratcheting up the emotional tension but less proficient at making the mystery elements of her story convincing.