Gail Godwin (Evensong; A Mother and Two Daughters) has created another atmospheric novel of place, character and time in Flora, which is narrated by a woman in her 70s recounting the formative summer of 1945.
Helen, a precocious 10-year old, has suffered irreparable and haunting losses in this fateful year. Her mother died when she was three, and her father is working on a super secret project in Oak Ridge, Tenn, so he can only come home to North Carolina--where Helen lives with her beloved grandmother Nonie--occasionally. Then Nonie dies, Helen's best friend Brian comes down with polio and another friend moves away. The combination of these losses leaves the child bereft and grieving, and then Helen's father invites his late wife's cousin to move in with her for the summer.
Flora is 22, a "simple-hearted girl," a chatterbox from Alabama not always discreet in her pronouncements, waiting for a teaching appointment for the next school year. Nonie once described her as having "the gift of tears"; indeed, it seems at times that Helen must care for her, rather than the other way around.
Helen can barely stand Flora and has a hard time welcoming her to Old One Thousand, as the falling-down house is called. To make matters worse, Helen's father is convinced Brian's polio is the sign of an epidemic, so he forbids them to go visiting, swimming or even into town. Mrs. Jones comes to clean and Finn delivers groceries; that is the sum total of their social life.
In this hermetically sealed world, Helen develops a crush on Finn and fantasizes that her father will invite him to live with them when Flora leaves. Helen and Flora learn a great deal from each other and by summer's end might even have become friends--until Helen catches Flora and Finn in an embrace. She bolts from the house and sets in motion a series of events that ends in tragedy.
Having Helen tell her story so many years after the fact is a brilliant strategy on Godwin's part--the novel is filled with sadness and regret, but also illuminated by the wisdom and understanding that distance lends. --Valerie Ryan
Shelf Talker: A haunting and intimate novel about loss and remorse, set against the final months of World War II.