Ruskovich presents a landscape of aftermaths and mnemonics: cryptic remains of indeterminate presence. Idaho is a world of vivid particularity, a collection of evanescent traces and tracks, stains and remnants. The scene in the truck is dominated by scent, residual or imagined: a pair of leather gloves Wade kept, perhaps to preserve the trace of the “last smell in his daughter’s hair” the “smell of grease and honeysuckle”. Although the love between Ann and Wade is enduringly passionate and tender, his behaviour is tinged by minor outbreaks of bizarre violence. What Wade has not disclosed may never be communicated: the memories he does retain are obscure. Her quest is urgent now, since her husband suffers from early onset dementia. Within the abandoned truck, Ann recurrently seeks to imagine what led up to the murder. Emily Ruskovich’s moving and profound debut novel denies such generic satisfaction. Why? What happened? The scene appears set for a murder mystery, with the usual twists and thrills, guaranteeing ultimate gratification of the reader’s thirst for solutions. The older child, June, fled into the forest and was not seen again Jenny was sentenced to life imprisonment. In this truck, one summer morning in 1995, Wade’s first wife, Jenny, took an axe to her beloved younger daughter, May. I n 2004 Ann Mitchell, Wade’s second wife of nine years, sits in their out-of-commission family truck parked on an Idaho mountainside.
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