Every now and then, if you're lucky, a novel grabs you at hello and doesn't let go. Such is the case with this gripping debut novel from Elizabeth Wetmore. https://www.elizabethwetmore.com/ I actually gasped at the unexpectedly powerful first paragraph and then marveled at Ms. Wetmore's visual writing style and wildly apt metaphors.
It's said that this is the year of the woman and I've discovered that so many books on the Library Journal long list for best literary fiction of the year feature wonderfully resilient, powerful female characters. "Valentine" introduces them in abundance.
Fourteen-year-old Glory's is the first voice we hear as she rises to consciousness from the desert floor. When she spots the man passed out in the bed of his pickup, the horror of what happened to her the night before dawns just as the agony from her injuries slams her fully awake. The vast, arid landscape of the west Texas oil fields offers little hope of escape but on the horizon a farmhouse beckons if she can hobble her way there.
Mary Rose can scarcely believe what she sees when the broken girl knocks at her door but she takes Glory in, compels her daughter to call the sheriff, and grabs her rifle when the pickup pulls into her driveway, joining her fate to Glory's from that moment on.
Gossip runs like a wildfire through Odessa. When the rape charges are filed everyone has an opinion. Corinne, recently widowed, angry at the world, and drinking way more than she should sits at the bar with one ear tuned to the conversation of the two old guys a few stools down as they opine that "those Mexican gals grow up quick. She was no kid, she knew what she was doing." We cheer for Corinne as she laces into them but somehow we understand that little good may come of it.
Mary Rose has had to leave her farm and move into town for her own safety. Since she offered to testify her life has become a living hell, death threats come fast and furious as her phone rings off the wall. Her husband thinks she's losing her mind and sometimes she thinks so too. Only her new neighbor Corinne intuits her full fury.
This piercingly angry novel tears open the window into small town prejudice, class warfare, the nature of evil and yes, the satisfaction of revenge. Wetmore describes lives as dry and desiccated as the landscape that envelopes them yet, when pushed to the limit, these women rise up and change each other's futures.
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