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WHAT YOU WISH FOR
by Janet Dawson
Perseverance Press, September 2012
288 pages
$15.95
ISBN: 156474518X


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Retired history professor Lindsey Page is living an enviable life: living comfortably alone in Northern California, preparing to write a book for her dream project on women's lives in Latin America, and enjoying frequent gatherings with her best friends from college. Suddenly, Lindsey's life is turned into turmoil as her estranged daughter Nina shows up at her doorstep needing a place to live. Then she is drawn into assisting one of her research subjects track down the son she lost in wartime El Salvador. To further complicate matters, the daughter of an ailing friend asks her to perform an awkward favor and she is increasingly drawn into a power struggle inside a struggling coffee company run by her friend Claire.

Ever the historian, Lindsey probes into the past for answers. Dawson employs copious use of flashback sequences to both early 1970s Berkeley where Lindsey and her friends lived during college and late 1980s El Salvador where the political turmoil that led to the displacement of Flor's son and the dealings of Claire's coffee company intersect. Dawson is able to seamlessly blend half a dozen storylines in a way that does not confuse the reader, but also is able to provide some subtle foreshadowing of what is to come.

Lindsey is a likable, yet a realistic and flawed, character who is a thoroughly enjoyable companion and her friends and acquaintances are well-drawn and for most of the novel their conflicts are all quite human and uncontrived. The story Dawson tells touches on many societal and political themes, but does so in a naturalistic way so that the reader is not distracted from the plot itself. Similarly, the themes of perception, friendship, and the idea that one never truly knows another person are on display in a smart, but not overbearing manner.

Unfortunately, for a novel that strives for—and largely achieves—well-grounded characters who reside in a plausible and realistic world, the final third of WHAT YOU WISH FOR descends into sensationalism and has its characters behaving in ways incongruent with the 200 pages that precede the novel's final act. This is not an altogether rare problem in this type of novel; however it is disappointing given the realism that works so well for Dawson earlier in the story.

Janet Dawson's WHAT YOU WISH FOR is a worthwhile and satisfying read, a disappointing denouement aside, as the journey it takes you on is ultimately more important than where the disappointing denouement leaves you. In her first stand-alone novel, Dawson gives readers a page-turning read that will satisfy the mystery-lover and readers of smart literary fiction alike.

§ Ben Neal is a public librarian in northeastern Tennessee and likes to fancy himself an amateur writer, humorist, detective, and coffee connoisseur in his spare time. He can be reached at beneneal@indiana.edu.

Reviewed by Ben Neal, June 2012

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