A young girl uncovers dark family secrets in a haunting, evocative first novel by storywriter Block (Destination Known
). In 1941, Hyde Bend is a tiny town on a sharp turn in the Allegheny River; its big employers are a steel mill and a pesticide plant, and virtually all its inhabitants are Polish Catholics. Dressing as a boy, Block's young, unnamed narrator delivers meat for the town butcher (she doesn't want anyone to recognize her) in order to raise enough money to buy back the Black Madonna, a family painting that's now gathering dust at the local pawn shop. The mystery of the painting is revealed through Block's detailed portrayal of the troubled relationship between the girl's cold mill worker father and her desperate, beautiful mother, both of whom do their best to avoid one another while raising the narrator and her younger brother, Martin. As a delivery "boy," the girl has a window into the town's other households, which proves especially useful when rumors start circulating about the murder of the town's tyrannical matriarch, Swatka Pani. Block deftly balances the subsequent murder mystery with a rich family and community portrait, revealing a treacherous, insular world that the narrator and her brother must constantly negotiate. As Block's narrator makes her way through the maze of secrets linking her mother and Swatka Pani, she also learns more about her family's tortured dynamic. Block's fluid prose makes the combination especially intoxicating, and her ability to uncover the shadowy, dangerous heart of a wartime mill town is just as impressive. Agent, Jonathan Pecarsky at the William Morris Agency.
(Apr.)
