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This is a very satisfying yet quite difficult book to read and for the same reasons, the characters. King creates two of the most authentic, believable, empathetic, memorable characters I have ever met. You worry with them, but you also worry for them. They are complete people with flaws and virtues and you are never certain how either of them is going to react to any situation. Andy Carmichael is in his fifties when we first meet him. The defining time in his life was his service in Vietnam, service he volunteered for. The description of his months in country is so searing, so poignant that it is hard to believe King was not there. This must capture the essence of how young men were turned into killing machines and why some of them had serious problems readjusting to a peacetime world. Andy could not at first, and he lived as many did, homeless, drifting, sometimes even committing crimes. Then he turned his Vietnam-taught talents to rescuing children who were being abused, rescuing them illegally if necessary. He was constantly in danger and the adrenaline rush made it possible for him to pull himself out of the emotional chaos he had been in. Jamie was twelve although he looked younger. His computer was his only escape from a world he hated but he dreamed that somehow he could create a cloak of invisibility so that when his fatherıs footsteps came up the stairs and toward his room, he would be indiscernible and his father would continue on by. Sometimes it even worked. We do not know what this life has done to Jamie, how it has injured him, or what he has learned from it. Those who know him well have different views about what he has become. Obviously Andy and Jamie come together. Andy rescues Jamie as his last recovery before he retires with Rae, the wonderful mad woman he met on Sanctuary Island (and we met in FOLLY). But the plot takes the reader in directions different from what we might anticipate. It twists and turns and never can you relax and think you know what is going to happen right until the end. It is a story of violence and courage, of love and pain, of all those things that go to make up life. Events are sometimes difficult to accept but hope shines through them like the sun coming out on a cloudy day. The setting is so well done, especially Vietnam, that it becomes very real for the reader. I was reading the section on Vietnam sitting in a doctorıs waiting room and literally forget where I was and why because I was so engrossed in the setting. The jungle seethes with smells and sounds and the dread that a Viet Cong might be around the next corner or across the river or even walking beside you hidden until the shot rings out. Andy could never relax and neither can the reader. The plot is complex and intriguing, the subsidiary characters are as well developed as the two main characters, the writing is, as always, exquisite and brilliant. And yet I keep going back to the two characters, scarred, flawed, and damaged by people who should have protected them, and yet still coming through the dark into the light, strong and brave people.
Reviewed by Sally A. Fellows, April 2003
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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