A Bend in the Willow by Susan Clayton-Goldner is a realistic fiction novel that weaves together many themes, the most prominent of which are the themes of maternal love and determination, and the effect the past has on the present.
The novel starts with Robin Lee Carter in Willowood, Kentucky, in the 1950s. These flashbacks give the reader glimpses at the motivation behind Robin Lee’s reinvention of herself as reputable and educated Catherine Henry, whose past is a series of fictions she tells her husband Ben, a dean at a medical school in Tucson, Arizona. In 1985, Michael, their five-year-old son, is diagnosed with chemo-resistant leukemia, a development that threatens to upend Catherine Henry’s comfortable way of life. Determined to help her son and desperate for a relative’s potential matching bone marrow, she contacts her nineteen-year-old son that she gave up for adoption and returns to Willowood to find her brother. Aware that admitting to her presence at the scene of the
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However, this novel surprised me. This is a sensitively written narrative. The author handled the characters and their hardships with poise, almost understatement. She never tells the reader how to feel, but presents opportunities for empathy with the characters. Clayton-Goldner’s characters are relatable, and her depiction of the children was particularly lifelike. The vivid and poetic writing kept me absorbed in the story – A Bend in the Willow is a book I didn’t want to put down until I reached the end. Overall, the pacing was quick and the flashbacks never slowed the story down. Indeed, the author balanced the story well between Catherine in the present and Robin Lee in the past. I particularly liked the way questions about authenticity are raised in the book by changing the point-of-view: Robin Lee’s point of view is in first person, and Catherine’s is in third