Tawni O’Dell’s novels share several attributes. They are peopled by working-class characters who are a bit stubborn and maybe independent to a fault. They see their shortcomings more easily than they see their successes; unable to forgive themselves, they disbelieve the forgiveness and acceptance of their larger community. The novels are deftly written, capturing the characters and their surroundings.
“Sister Mine,” like its two predecessors (“Back Roads” and “Coal Run”), is set in a coal-mining town in western Pennsylvania. O’Dell, however, departs from her earlier works in two ways: this is a first-person narrative and the narrator is a woman.
Shae-Lynn is a unique piece of work. A former cop in her early 40s, she operates the lone taxi service in Jolly Mount, driving “in a town where no one needs a cab but plenty of people need rides.” Sometimes people pay cash, but she has also taken “casseroles, lip gloss, plumbing advice, beer, prayers for my immortal soul, and promises to mow my yard.”
She receives a call from the Harrisburg airport, two hours away. Gerald Kozlowski, a lawyer from New York, is looking for a ride to Jolly Mount. On the way to his destination – Centresburg, because Jolly Mount is far too small to support a hotel – Koz lowski tells Shae-Lynn he’s in the area looking for a woman who grew up there. Does she know Shannon Penrose?
A blast from family’s past
The question takes her back 18 years. She’d grown up in Jolly Mount, leaving only after the responsibilities of single motherhood forced her to leave her home and abusive father. Shortly thereafter, her 16-year-old sister disappeared. She has long believed her father murdered her sister. This question from a stranger is the first indication that her sister, Shannon, is still alive.
Shannon is not only alive, but quite pregnant when she shows up at Shae-Lynn’s home several days later. But this story isn’t so much about re-establishing a bond between sisters, though Shae-Lynn tries mightily to do that. It is more about how coming to terms with the past can help you move beyond it to arrive fully into the present.
The kindness and many of the challenges in this tale come not from strangers but from neighbors. Shae-Lynn is the girl who left town and encountered the wider world. She raised her son Clay while working as a police officer in Washington, D.C.
But singlehandedly raising a son in an urban setting is tough, and home exerts a force. Her father’s death made it safe to come back and her resume helped win her a job on the Centresburg police force. She only left that job after one domestic abuse case too many – and the anger it aroused – threatened to turn her from protector to vigilante.
Rooted in her town’s traumas
Shae-Lynn became further anchored in the community when a mining accident threatened men she’d known all her life. The “Jolly Mount Five” were trapped underground for several days, and though they emerged alive they were hardly unscathed. Now, several years after the accident, the aftereffects are roiling the community and Shae-Lynn remains intimately involved.
Her trauma isn’t nearly as obvious as that of the rescued miners, but Shae-Lynn’s scars are nearly as deep. Her sister’s re-appearance tears the scab off a wound she’d thought forgotten, if not healed, forcing her to confront long-buried feelings of failure. But she also must come to terms with what is clearly an unanswerable question: Her sister, alive and well, never made an effort to get in touch. Why not?
The obvious answer to the question is one more painful reality added to a lifetime accumulation. The strength of O’Dell’s narrative is that she dances around the main questions and lets her characters tell the story.
There is much to recommend “Sister Mine.” Shae-Lynn’s voice is entrancing in its honesty, and O’Dell’s ability to continue to freshly capture her mining communities is impressive. Readers may be disappointed in the way the relationship between the sisters is resolved, but even that may not be a shortcoming. Even if it is, the spot-on characters and the resonance of their surroundings make this one a worthy read.
Robin Vidimos reviews books for The Denver Post and Buzz in the ‘Burbs.
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Sister Mine
By Tawni O’Dell
Shaye Areheart, 416 pages, $23
