WOMAN IN RED
Eileen Goudge
Vanguard Press
Literary Fiction
ISBN-10: 1593154445
ISBN-13: 9781593154448

• About the Book
• Read an Excerpt
• Author Interview -- July 13, 2007
• Reading Group Guide

The past weighs heavily on this contemporary novel set on an island in the Pacific Northwest. Alice Kessler returns to her hometown after nine years in prison to try to mend her relationship with her teenaged son Jeremy. At the same time New York lawyer Colin McGill arrives with similar hopes of healing from alcoholism and grief, and decides to stay on in his recently deceased grandfather William's old house. The portrait of a beautiful woman in red hangs there, a testament both to William's artistic talent and also of his clandestine love for Alice's grandmother Eleanor.

Alice, whose crime of passion was perpetrated on the powerful mayor Owen White, faces an uphill battle in being accepted by her old friends and neighbors. Alice had seen Owen's car strike her first son, killing him, but no one else had. Young Jeremy was in the vehicle with her when, overcome with rage, she ran Owen down following the trial in which Owen was acquitted. "Alice had no awareness of her foot pressing down on the gas pedal; it was as if the car were being propelled by a force beyond her control."

Now, nine years later, Owen is in a wheelchair but still holds all the cards, including that of blackmail over the local chief of police, who also happens to be Alice's brother-in-law. It's a small island, and people are connected not only by current threads but also secrets from their ancestor's past that come to light as the novel unfolds.

Alice opens a restaurant, while Colin decides to revive an oyster farm. Their relationship, tentative at first (she doesn't need the complication, she tells herself, and he doesn't need the emotional challenge to his hard-won sobriety), gathers steam as she enlists his lawyerly services for her son Jeremy, who is brought up on a rape charge after consensual sex at a party. Jeremy, who has held his mother at arm's length, now turns to her in his hour of need.

Alice's big old African-American prison friend Calpernia shows up to help out at the restaurant. She believes in Alice and also imports her uncle and his magic rib recipe, which not even stuffy islanders can resist. Even her ex-husband starts to come around. But by then, we know Alice is eternally smitten by Colin, even if she won't admit it. "She shivered, feeling tiny sparks ignite under the skin where he'd grazed it." Those tiny sparks are a dead giveaway. The old ex doesn't have a chance. 

Points of view change with the chapters, between Colin, Alice, Jeremy and Owen in the present day, and between the grandparents William and Eleanor in World War II. (Owen gets short shrift though, just enough time to establish that he really is a power-hungry, guilt-ridden baddie.) I liked the subplot of Jeremy's teen life, and I thought the extrication from his rape charge was well done. As we become acquainted with the characters and their stories, mysteries reveal themselves, and even Owen's grandfather horns in (as a villain, of course.) The plot is nicely layered and connected, with some good twists and turns along the way. Needless to say, love and Alice prevail in the end.

    --- Reviewed by Eileen Zimmerman Nicol

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