A real page turner
© 2011 Amy Goodfellow Wagner
THE THINGS THAT KEEP US HERE
A novel by
Carla Buckley
Bantam Books Trade Paperbacks
$15.00
Last month, when my son came down with the flu, along with about a quarter of the student body of his college, he was quarantined to his dorm room for three days. The thought of him being sick, quarantined, and several hundred miles away was horribly upsetting. If I had read “The Things That Keep Us Here” before then, I would have been frantic.
Carla Buckley’s debut novel pushes that kind of maternal anxiety to the breaking point. Drawing on recent headlines about the possibility of an avian flu pandemic, Buckley crafts a tale of gripping, yet convincing, horror. What would happen if a pandemic erupted and what lengths would a mother go to to prevent her children from being infected?
When Ann Brooks’ recently separated husband, Peter, shows up on her doorstep with a graduate student in tow, seeking refuge in an Ohio community that is shutting down in response to reports of avian flu that is not only infecting the country from New York to LA but the world. Self-quarantined, Ann, Peter and their children face an unimaginable existence, where opening the door to a friend could prove fatal.
“Ann thought of those haunting photographs in the books on the 1918 pandemic, the ones that depicted rows of anonymous white cots spreading out as far as the eye could see, all of them filled with the sick and dying. . . . .As long as they kept others away, there was no way they would end up nameless in a photograph for future generations to page past and wonder.”
While infectiously suspenseful, Buckley deftly captures the rhythms of the Brooks’ family life that goes on even as the world around them falls apart. The children bicker. Laundry piles up. Ann’s relationship with Peter needs to be reassessed.
Topical and timely, “The Things That Keep Us Here” is sure to resonate with parents who want to keep their families safe – and is the best argument I can think of for racing out for a flu shot.
The Things That Keep Us Here is available in print and kindle editions at amazon.com and at your local bookstore
Comments