This earnest third novel by McAfee (The Climbing Tree) centers on a young woman who, suicidal after the stillbirth of her son, winds up in a psychiatric ward and begins a long course of psychotherapy and soul-searching. Isolated from her family and crippled by depression, Janey Nichols slowly draws close to some of the others on the ward, especially the charming, flamboyant Delphina, a battered alcoholic, who—Janey begins to realize—just might be worse off than her. The stillbirth brings up Janey's suppressed memories of her little brother's childhood death, for which she feels responsible, as well as her mother's alcoholism. Just as Janey finally begins to confront these facts, an unexpected betrayal and Delphina's self-destructiveness threaten to short-circuit her recovery. Janey's ability to pull out buried memories on cue is somewhat implausible, and McAfee's prose is unremarkable, pitted with awkward therapeutic dialogue and some overwrought similes (teeth are described as looking like "little tombstones in the darkness"). Yet readers who stick with the novel through its slow start will be rewarded with some genuinely moving scenes in which Janey comes to understand both her own and Delphina's struggles. Moreover, buried in the book is an unexpectedly provocative suggestion that makes it stand out from other trauma-and-recovery novels: McAfee implies that some depression may be self-inflicted. Local author publicity in Baltimore and D.C. (Oct. 1)
