From Amazon.com
Calling Kate Wilhelm a born storyteller is like calling Frank Sinatra a born singer: it's necessary but not sufficient to explain the genius that lies just behind the apparent facility. Whether Wilhelm is writing her prizewinning science fiction, her best-of-the-bunch legal thrillers (such as 1997's
Malice Prepense, which became
For the Defense in paperback), or an emotionally charged psychological thriller such as
The Good Children, Wilhelm instantly brings her characters to life and roots them in a landscape both familiar and formidable. What children haven't felt the terror of moving to a new home and a new school--that icy edge of not belonging that the four youngsters of Will and Lee McNair have been walking all their lives? Soon after the family moves into the Oregon house that Will promised would be their permanent home, he is killed in an accident, and the children have to cope with a series of life disturbances that strongly resemble the constant disasters faced (and overcome) by the original settlers of Oregon's rougher terrains. Wilhelm adds modern touches of paranoia and political correctness to produce a story and characters that you'll have trouble forgetting.
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Seamless storytelling and believable characters caught in a bizarre, inescapable situation make this latest psychological thriller from three-time Nebula Award winner Wilhelm (Malice Prepense) taut and satisfying. "When you've got family, you don't need anything else," Lee McNair tells her children. After an industrial accident kills her husband, the distraught McNair makes the four children promise they'll never let strangers touch her when she dies. The children find themselves called on to honor that promise when McNair is killed in a freakish backyard accident. Afraid of disobeying their mother and equally afraid that they'll be sent away to foster homes, the children bury her in the backyard and are forced to lie to neighbors and pretend that she is still alive. Their attempts to keep up the ruse are eerily successful?except that the youngest of the children begins to lose his sanity. Eventually, the McNairs call the authorities to report their mother's sudden disappearance. The youngest child's troubles deepen and a new piece of information about their mother's accident threatens to break up their carefully unified front. A young society lawyer, charged with looking in on the "abandoned" McNair children, creates another kind of complication when he falls in love with the engaging teenage narrator (and third McNair), Liz. Wilhelm's spare, unsentimental style contributes nicely to the mood of this well-told gothic tale.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
