From Publishers Weekly
In this riveting literary suspense novel, first-timer Ward presents in lean, luminous prose a precarious world where true love can ravage as well as redeem, exploring a series of murders in Lincoln, Nebr., in the 1950s from the perspective of three narrators. After an argument with her volatile stepfather, 14-year-old Caril Ann Fugate flees into the woods behind her house, where she spies (the real-life killer) red-haired Charles Starkweather, carrying a .22 rifle. From their first uneasy meeting, the girl senses that she and Starkweather are meant to be together. Ward eerily evokes a romantic union destined for disaster; the emotionally unsettled Starkweather pledges eternal love to the impressionable teen as he entangles her in murders that change their lives forever. Four years after the slayings that shook her hometown, Lincoln teenager Susan Hurst continues to pore over newspaper clippings about Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, secretly envious of their dark, desperate love. Bemused by a distant father and mercurial mother, Susan has trouble relating to peers until she meets Lowell Bowman, son of two of the murder victims. Thirty years later, Lowell Bowman, now a Manhattan art collector, remains haunted by visions of his parents' murder. He has grown apart from his wife, who pesters him about retrieving a mysterious safe deposit box. Traumatized by the past and fearful of the future, Bowman embarks on a solitary quest to examine the contents of the box and the purpose of his life. On the novel's acknowledgments page, Ward thanks her father for allowing her to explore such "delicate material." An already chilling novel drops a few more degrees at the unsettling admission that it's based in truth.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School - Ward skillfully tells the story of seemingly unrelated characters whose lives are changed forever because of the actions of serial killer Charlie Starkweather and his girlfriend, 14-year-old Caril Ann. She finds herself an accomplice to the killings, which occurred in the rural Midwest in the late 1950s. Ward interrupts Caril Ann's narrative to fast-forward to the early 1960s and introduces readers to a 12-year-old girl whose mother leaves home one day and never returns. Lonely Puggy becomes obsessed with the recent murders that occurred in her small Nebraska town. She is particularly attracted to Lowell, a boy whom she has never met but whose parents were two of Starkweather's victims. He, too, is now alone, and Puggy eventually seeks him out and befriends him. Ward again fast-forwards to give voice to Lowell and his current life in New York in the 1990s as he struggles to make sense of his adult troubles. The author continues to move easily back and forth in time within her characters' stories. She brings her characters full circle and gives readers insight into the ripple effects that lost love and acts of violence can have on the human heart. While she does not flinch from telling of the brutality of the real-life Starkweather killings, she writes with a sensitivity not unlike that of Alice Sebold in
The Lovely Bones. The characters in
Outside Valentine act and feel authentic, and Ward's use of alternating voices makes this novel a real page-turner.
- Catherine Gilbride, Farifax County Public Library, VA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
