Every once in a while, a reviewer gets the pleasure of witnessing a writer go through a sea change in development as a craftsperson. It can happen near the beginning of a writer’s career, in the middle, or even near the end. But this form of literary evolution is almost always marked by a particular piece of work to which future critics can point and say that was when things changed.
With “The Virgin of Small Plains,” Nancy Pickard, author of the Jenny Cain mystery series (“Bum Steer,” “Twilight”) and the Marie Lightfoot trilogy (including “The Whole Truth”), has evolved into a writer of substantial literary power and gravitas, showing all the signs of becoming one of the best native-born writers to emerge from the state of Kansas.
Equal parts coming-of-age tale, suspenseful thriller and mainstream evocation of small-town Kansas, “The Virgin of Small Plains” defies categorization – especially when a bit of magic realism is thrown into the mix – so it’s safe just to say Pickard’s latest is a darn good read, and anyone smart enough to pick it up can’t help but admire it.
Told in two parallel narratives, one set in 2004 and the other in 1987, the story opens on a scene all too familiar to anyone living where icy roads are a factor.
Abby Reynolds, driving home on a frozen road, taps the brakes too hard and is sent into a slow-motion spin. The distraction that made Abby brake turns out to be the elderly, Alzheimer’s-stricken mother of her childhood boyfriend, Mitch Newquist. This event and its aftermath stir up old memories for Abby, her friend Rex Shellenberger (sheriff of Small Plains, having followed in his father’s footsteps), and a host of others who would rather let sleeping dogs lie.
Seventeen years earlier, Rex’s father awakened him and his brother in the middle of the night when a storm swept in. Expecting to go about the business of rescuing newborn calves on his father’s ranch, Rex is surprised to find the body of a nude, red-haired young woman, the apparent victim of a rape. Abby spends that same night with Mitch, planning to finally “go all the way.” But the couple is interrupted by the arrival of Rex’s sheriff father, who has brought the young woman’s body to Abby’s father, the town physician.
After getting a glimpse of the gruesome goings-on, Mitch runs home. The next morning, the town is abuzz about the nameless young woman found murdered in the snow – and Mitch is nowhere to be found. It isn’t long before gossips start speculating that Mitch might have murdered the woman. Later, when that story doesn’t stick, they decided to blame Abby for his disappearance, claiming she was pressuring him into impregnating her. And as the years go by, those same voices affix the unnamed murder victim with a miraculous power: It is said that the young murder victim was a virgin, and that anyone who kneels by her graveside will have his or her prayers answered.
With all of that history roiling in the background, Abby decides to solve the mystery of the young girl’s identity. And when she starts asking questions – of the elder Sheriff Shellenberger’s wife, Mitch’s dad and others – the truth of what really happened that night begins to reveal itself, setting Abby, Rex and several others in the path of danger.
Even if her latest novel didn’t have an element of suspense to it – making it that much more readable – Pickard pulls off the feat of turning Kansas (a state most American’s think of as dishwater dull) into an ominous, foreboding landscape capable of causing nightmares and setting one’s neck hairs on end.
From the break-your-neck suddenness of winter storms to the beautiful but mysterious landscape of the Flint Hills and the heart-thumping horror of a plains-spawned tornado, Kansas becomes a supporting character in its own right. And Pickard nails scene after scene while moving her narrative along with clean, well-considered prose.
Here she concisely sums up the feeling most of us encounter when returning to the stomping grounds of our adolescence: “He’d forgotten how gorgeous this area could be at certain times of year, in certain light, in pleasant weather. Maybe he hadn’t even noticed the beauty when he was a kid. Maybe it had been something he’d taken for granted, like fresh eggs, rodeos, and dogs that were allowed to run loose. But now, seeing it so many years later, and through adult eyes, it struck him that he had lived his childhood in the heart of an impressionist painting. It galled him to have to admire it.”
Passages like that, along with a suspenseful narrative and plot, solidly sketched characters and a deep, heartfelt understanding of the relationship dynamics between Midwestern men and women are what set “The Virgin of Small Plains” apart from run-of-the-mill thrillers and pretentious mainstream novels. Pickard has fashioned a novel that accurately reflects the secrets and silences locked deep within the hearts of all small-town Midwesterners. And she has built the cornerstone of what will no doubt one day turn out to be a mansion’s worth of exceptional fiction written by one of the finest writers in the Midwest.
Dorman T. Shindler, a freelancer from Missouri, is the editor of “The Best of Philip Jose Farmer” and contributes to several national magazines and newspapers.
The Virgin of Small Plains
By Nancy Pickard
Ballantine, 352 pages, $23.95
