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[/amazon_link]Title : The Weight of Blood
Author : Laura McHugh
Genre : Mystery
Publisher : Spiegel & Grau (Random House)
Pages: 320
Publish Date : March 11th, 2014
Source : Netgalley / Publisher ARC
Rating : 4.5/5
Lucy Dane has grown up in the small rural town of Henbane, in the shadow of the Ozarks. When Lucy is 17, her 18 year old mentally disabled friend Cheri goes missing. Searches are launched for her, but when she is found, Cheri is literally in pieces.
Lucy is particularly touched by this tragedy, because of her friendship with Cheri, and because of the familiar refrains; Lucy’s mother Lila also went missing soon after giving birth to Lucy. She was never found. When Lucy happens to find Cheri’s necklace (which Lucy had given her) cleaning up a trailer belonging to her uncle Crete, she realizes that Crete and her father Carl know more about Cheri’s disappearance than they are telling. That doesn’t stop her from launching her very own secret search for Cheri.
The book runs in two parallel tracks – one has Lucy trying to find Cheri, and the other is about Lucy’s mother Lila, as a fragile and beautiful young woman, freshly aged out of the foster system and newly arrived in Henbane as an employee of Crete Dane. The book is told in the first person, with each chapter from the point of view of a different character.
The book starts off with Cheri’s disappearance as remembered by Lucy. Slowly we are introduced to the entire cast of characters as they relate to Lucy – her father Carl who works in construction and is away many days at a time, Carl’s protective elder brother Crete who owns the local store and restaurant, her friend Bess and her mother Gabby who live in a ramshackle trailer some distance away, and Birdie, the aged local midwife who keeps a parental eye on Lucy. Lila, who’s story is told in parallel, also has a few familiars who weigh in – Ransome, the wiry farm-hand who works with her, Ray Walker, the local lawyer who wants to help Lila, and Gabby, the closest thing Lila has for a friend.
The Weight of Blood is an atmospheric mystery, because the author melds the people with the setting, letting the story steep in the rural mindset and superstition of rural Missouri. Henbane is another name for nightshade, and Henbane with it’s peculiarly named landmarks, she tells us in Lucy’s words, has the devil’s anatomy “worked into the landscape”. The people, reserved and close-minded don’t take to strangers; many of the townspeople shy away from exotic looking outsider Lila and even her Henbane-born daughter Lucy, believing Lila a witch. Homes are miles apart from each other, guns are plentiful and locking doors is scoffed at, because as Birdie puts it “If the wolf wants in, he’ll find a way”.
McHugh makes a splendid debut with this novel. Her writing is effortless and fluid, her characters unforgettable and her settings redolent with the flavor of the Ozarks. I do not exaggerate when I say that the book is mesmerizing; it draws you in – all gorgeous, voluptuous prose and sinister hints. You go where McHugh leads you; the winding road and the bucolic landscape slowly giving way to throbbing evil.
The Weight of Blood is a sumptuous read, and not to be missed.
