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(More customer reviews)Brief summary and review, no spoilers:
Patsy MacLemoore is a professor of history at a small college near Pasadena. She is also an alcoholic, who has suffered several blackouts. One morning she wakes up in jail with a bad hangover and having no idea what happened to get her there. She thinks it's probably something minor since she's woke up in jail like this before. But this time it's much more serious - 2 people, a young mother and her daughter were run over and killed.
This book is divided into sections by year. We start off in 1980 just one year before this accident, and this novel moves us forward over two decades. During this time we follow Patsy as her life takes this sudden plunge, and as she tries to make amends for what she did.
There were many things to love about this novel. I thought the dialogue and characterization were spot on, and I was completely pulled into the story. The locale is mainly Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, and I am very familiar with both places and thought their descriptions were accurate and I could just picture them all.
There was also an epic feel to it as we travel the years with Patsy. We age along with her and we share in her traumas. When I turned the last page of this story I felt like I had been through an experience - I needed to think about this book before I could pick up anything else.
I think this book would appeal to a lot of people. We relive the AIDS crisis and we learn about the criminal justice system, AA, and what it's like to be in prison. We see (and experience) how life can turn on a dime, and how our lives can take strange trajectories away from our best laid plans. This book is about forgiving and atonement, in the truest sense of both those words.
And for those who like this sort of thing (and I do), there is a twist of sorts, towards the end.
I highly recommend this book. It was an absolute page-turner for me, and I can easily see this novel being made into a movie. I also recommend it for book clubs as there is a lot to think about and discuss.
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