40 Days in Hicksville

Written by Christina Kilbourne

DCB

978-1-77086-715-4

264 pp.

Ages 12+

October 2023

 

Moving to Clarendon with her mother to live in her grandparents' old home was supposed to give Kate Cooper a clean break from living in the city. Little did they know that she'd just find a new trouble with classmate Zach Whitchurch. Yeah, she's definitely safer in Clarendon a.k.a. Hicksville. Not. 

When Kate and her mom Sally move into the Cooper place next door, Zach is smitten. And Kate, determined to convince her mom Sally that she's making an effort, let's Zach show her around. When he points out Peter Goheen's property, warning her that he is known to be cruel and maybe even dangerous, Kate reveals that he is her grandfather, though she's never met him. When they venture onto his property to introduce Kate, Pater Goheen is less than welcoming and warns them against trespassing again. That doesn't deter Kate who, with Zach, discovers a cave-like crevasse which they investigate after midnight so that she can make a video. What they discover deep inside are the remains of two bodies. 

 

Zach's dad, a detective in Clarendon, reveals that a wallet in the jeans of one is that of Sally's fifteen-year-old brother James who disappeared in 1982 along with his friend Luke McLeod. For the first time, Kate learns about her uncle and his disappearance and about Sally's troubled family life because of her mean drunk of a father. Though Peter Goheen was questioned, Kate's dad Mitch provided an alibi for his father. And without bodies, it was impossible to know the truth. But that was then.

Are these the bodies of James and Luke? What happened to them? Who did it and why? 40 Days in Hicksville could be a true crime podcast, unravelling the story through Kate and Zach's eyes–chapters are alternating perspectives of the two teens–and with the twists and turns that often come with a thriller. Christina Kilbourne, author of The Limitless Sky, Safe Harbour and Dear Jo, takes us to a small Ontario town as if the setting for an episode of Dateline or 20/20, unravelling the mystery with each interview and piece of evidence and investigative step of the police.  And, as in those in-depth investigations of the newsmagazine shows, the trajectory from missing person to justice is not a straight line. There are those who keep secrets, those who hide truths, those who lie, and those who grieve. There are those who are determined to make things right and find justice. There is danger and revelations, standstills, and action. With a variety of characters, some who are aggravating, others naive, some scared, others aggressive, 40 Days in Hicksville remind us that small towns are not always boring communities in which nothing happens. Sometimes they are seething with secrets and dangers and history that are only revealed when someone from outside arrives. Kate may not have wanted to be in Clarendon but her first forty days in the town her father called Hicksville are as thrilling as the urbex videos that got her in trouble in the city. Fortunately, Christina Kilbourne's "Epilogue" reveals that this adventure has a far more constructive outcome for both Kate and her community.

The Almost Truth

by Eileen Cook
Simon Pulse
978-1-4424-4019-7
248 pp.
Ages 14+
2012

Sadie has big plans.  Now that she's finished high school, she's determined to leave her trailer park life on Bowton Island and head to Berkley to study architecture.  Although she's most upset about leaving her best friend, the very hot Brendan, she's been saving her money–often from small cons she pulls, as learned from her father who is currently in jail–and finally has enough.  That is, until her mother, a hotel maid who is always pinching pennies, guiltlessly tells Sadie that she took it for Dad's lawyer.  (Nice parents, eh?)

A poster of a three-year-old child, Ava McKenna, who went missing 15 years earlier gives Sadie an idea for a con that would help her get the money she needs for school.  The wealthy McKenna family who is offering $250,000 for information about Ava's disappearance from the island is slated to attend a big fundraising event for their McKenna's Children's Foundation and Sadie, with Brendan's help and information she gleans from hotel staff, devises a way to get close to the family.

While working to insinuate herself close to Chase Parker, the young man in charge of organizing the charity event, Sadie finds herself at a crossroads with Brendan and navigating her own family obstacles, including her mother who has difficulties with the truth.

For years I thought I was going crazy, since I didn't remember all these things, but then I realized she just made them up.  Cut out any parts of her life she didn't like and squished in a new and better memory to fill the gap. (pg. 59)

The mystery of what happened to little Ava becomes wrapped up in Sadie's desire to know herself better, though she's running from Brendan and can't trust her parents to think about anyone but themselves.

Though the reader might be chagrined by some too-obvious coincidences, the story of Ava McKenna's disappearance is a true mystery that is not solved until the very end, so don't be so sure that you've got the whole truth at any time before then.  Often the truth is tailored for those receiving it and can be interpreted far too many ways.  The Almost Truth makes it clear that sometimes the truth is hidden by a strong desire to make that truth a reality, rather than as a result of omission or outright lies.  But when untruths are piled upon untruths by different parties, it is vey difficult to discern the truth under the burden of imagined realities.  

Having previously reviewed Eileen Cook's Unraveling Isobel (Simon Pulse, 2012), I knew I could expect a well-crafted plot that involved some mystery, romance and teen angst, but I was impressed by the depth of the plotting in The Almost Truth.  While I wondered why Sadie could not see how much Brendan cared for her–I suspect that this is not unusual among teens–and I was convinced that the solution to Ava's disappearance was obvious, I soon realized that there was much more to the story.  And that's because Eileen Cook has established characters who choose to see circumstances that work best with their own interpretations and that become their reality.  They're not living lies, at least they don't all know they are, but they're working with the reality they see.  It can be confusing and sometimes you want to shake one of them and yell, "Don't you see it?" but it wouldn't do any good.  The Almost Truth demonstrates that sometimes the almost truth is the only truth there is, until one person pulls out a single truth that allows the burden of imagined realities to collapse.

The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing

by C. K. Kelly Martin

Dancing Cat Books

978-1-770864115

256 pp.

Ages 13+

September, 2014

The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing, as a title, suggests the lightness of song and joy. But those moments are few and far between in the actual story. That's because The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing is a story of secrets, confusion, anger, and grief, with only a few bars of a sweet song that may be heard in the background, leaving you hoping the song will make its way to the forefront and be sung loud and clear and passionately.

When Serena LeBlanc's older brother, Devin, trades a life of Mensa brilliance at university for drugs and life on the street, she could never have foreseen the impact it would have on her and her family.  Having endured Devin's plunge into drugs, theft and erratic behaviour, culminating with his disappearance, Serena's parents seem to have disassociated themselves from any life without Devin.  Mom is constantly on eBay purchasing new Swarovski figurines and Dad just seems to go through the motions of life. Her eldest brother Morgan, a celebrity VJ at MuchMusic, lives with his partner Jimmy in Toronto, but still tries to offer the support they all need to remain an intact family.  Serena, not yet sixteen, loses almost thirty pounds and begins dating Jacob Westermark, leaving behind her old friendships, and enjoying a new popularity.

But recognizing an incident at a party as an attempt at sexual exploitation, Serena swears off Jacob and guys in general, finding new friends in girls Nicole and Genevieve who have been humiliated by their boyfriends too.  Bonding with the girls over their disappointment in boys provides Serena some refuge from her parents' detachment, as does a part-time job as a cashier at Total Drug Mart.  But two events change everything for Serena.

A young man who regularly drops into Total Drug Mart begins to show an interest in Serena.  But Serena is torn between being loyal to her friends and their boyfriend-less status and becoming involved with a really nice guy, Gage Cochrane.  Worse still, Serena doesn't know how to be herself around Gage.  She still sees herself as the chubby girl who would need to throw herself at a guy to keep him interested.  Gage, on the other hand, seems fairly well-adjusted and is not impressed with Serena's sexual antics.

Then, while attending one of Jimmy's art shows in Toronto, Serena spots Devin on the street.  But when he flees from her, catching a streetcar, Serena is left with more questions about who her brother has become and whether he wants to come home ever.

It's painful to read Serena's attempts to understand and find her brother, especially as she examines her relationship with him and how she sees herself.

...I can see with absolute clarity how the tangled mess of my former blubber, personal insecurities, and stupid need for some kind of male appraisal have shaped me into a person I don't want to be. (pg. 114) 

As she did in My Beating Teenage Heart, Yesterday and Tomorrow, C. K. Kelly Martin expertly weaves a story based on the typical confusion of the teen years but with an atypical, devastating situation that impacts that confusion all the more.  In The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing, she imbues the story with a grittiness and harshness about young relationships, especially in the shadow of social media exploitation, and a young man's severance from his family, and creates a series of scenarios you hope you'll never have to experience.  You won't necessarily like Serena (or at least I didn't, at the beginning) but you'll understand how she has become the person she has.  Her life is messy but it's not until she takes some responsibility for that mess and faces that she can't force things to turn out the way she wants that life begins to feel better.  She can't make Devin come home.  She can't make her parents change.  She can't make Gage act like she thinks he should.  Serena cannot make her life all sweet and lovely but she can control herself and her choices and that makes things all the sweeter.  C. K. Kelly Martin gets that very right and, without making Serena's life a Broadway musical, she allows her to find a song that is sure to become sweeter. 

Finding Melissa

by Cora Taylor
Fitzhenry & Whiteside
978-1-55455-274-0
184 pp.
Ages 14+
December 2013

In 1990, two-year-old Melissa Warren goes missing from her family's tent in the middle of the night while camping in northern B.C. The family dog has been found killed and the authorities suspect a sow grizzly may have taken Melissa who was prone to waking early.  Or she may have fallen in the river.  There is no definitive answer.  Melissa's five-year-old sister Clarice could offer no help, something that seemed to frustrate their mother.  Twelve years later, mom and dad have split, dad has remarried and has a new daughter.  Mom has spent much of those years volunteering at Child Find in the hopes of solving Melissa's disappearance.  Meanwhile Clarice has become the unmanageable teen who craves even a portion of the attention her mother still bestows on her missing child.

Finding Melissa alternates between Clarice's first person reminiscences of that June camping trip and her current struggles and two other narratives. One set of narratives, titled Leesa, shares the spring and summer happenings in the life of a young teen who lives in northern Alberta with her old-fashioned Aunt Rosie, having been deposited there after Leesa's mother and then her father, Rosie's brother Hector, abandoned the child.  But, a third set of accounts, appropriately in bold font, recount the twisted actions and thinking of Hector Weldon, focusing on his drug trafficking, his incarceration and his horrific plans for Leesa.

Each of their lives begin to unravel at the twelve year mark.  First, Clarice has flashbacks about seeing Melissa leave the tent that night and spotting an extra set of headlights in the campground. What better way to appease the guilt of not remembering those details earlier than volunteering at Child Find and establishing detailed databases to allow for cross-referencing?  For Leesa, who has been plagued by nightmares, a live-in babysitting stint for Rhonda and Peter Friesen and their two children, Aggie, 5, and Dawson, 1, has her exposed to the dysfunctional machinations of the Friesen family.  In response, Leesa is determined to be spunky and do what's right for both children, but especially Aggie.  But Leesa will also need that spunk to deal with Hector.  Newly released from prison, Hector, appropriately shortened to Heck, starts coming around, intending to take Leesa away from Aunt Rosie.

Finding Melissa is a riveting story that takes an old missing child case and escalates it to thriller as Clarice, Leesa and Heck's stories begin to converge.  However, the anticipation of that convergence is not rife with hope and a happy ending.  There are too many secrets and deceit and hard feelings at play to lead to a gratifying resolution for all characters.  Cora Taylor plays off her characters' needs for love and support, sometimes sincere, sometimes misplaced and occasionally manipulative.  And what if there is conflict between those who give you love and those who are family?  Clarice and her parents, Leesa and Aunt Rosie and Heck, Aggie and her parents–all their lives are in flux by virtue of their relationships, both perceived and real, and by choosing to move forward with that instability or fight it will make all the difference.  Cora Taylor gets it right for her characters, especially for the repugnant Heck.