The Very Marrow of Our Bones: A Novel

by Christine Higdon

Overview

Defiance, faith, and triumph in a heartrending novel about daughters and mothers

On a miserable November day in 1967, two women disappear from a working-class town on the Fraser River. The community is thrown into panic, with talk of drifters and murderous husbands. But no one can find a trace of Bette Parsons or Alice McFee. Even the egg seller, Doris Tenpenny, a woman to whom everyone tells their secrets, hears nothing.

Ten-year-old Lulu Parsons discovers something, though: a milk-stained note her mother, Bette, left for her father on the kitchen table. Wally, it says, I will not live in a tarpaper shack for the rest of my life . . .

Lulu tells no one, and months later she buries the note in the woods. At the age of ten, she starts running — and forgetting — lurching through her unraveled life, using the safety of solitude and detachment until, at fifty, she learns that she is not the only one who carries a secret.

Hopeful, lyrical, comedic, and intriguingly and lovingly told, The Very Marrow of Our Bones explores the isolated landscapes and thorny attachments bred by childhood loss and buried secrets.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781773051857
Publisher:	ECW Press
Publication date:	04/03/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	488
Sales rank:	814,860
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Christine Higdon is a writer, editor, and graphic designer. She was shortlisted for the 2011 Marina Nemat Award and for the 2016 CBC Creative Nonfiction Prize. Daughter of a Newfoundlander and a British Columbian, Christine lives in Mimico, Ontario, where she hooks rugs, worries about the bees, and longs for either ocean. This is her first novel.

Read an Excerpt

It was under the milk jug on the kitchen table. A wet ring cut across the centre of the piece of paper, a lined sheet she’d torn from one of our scribblers. Mine probably. And the ink had run milky blue, veins emptied on the page. Why I hid it, I can’t say. Why I didn’t say anything about it to anyone, even when the police came, even years later, when my brother Trevor hammered a little wooden cross with her name on it into the garden, like for a dog’s grave, and I kicked it over, I will never know.

The note said: Wally I will not live in a tarpaper shack for the rest of my life. Love Bette.

None of us knew about pain. Not the kind that leaves you shattered and speechless. I had watched Trevor fly from the tree fort once—a graceless trapeze artist—and heard the sharp, unexpected snap of his wrist against the moss and cedar blanket of the forest floor. I’d seen my twin brothers Alan and Ambrose knocked bloody and unconscious in a dirt-bike crash at the gravelly corner of Forward Road and Hemlock Street. And when Jed was a puppy he ran headlong into the moving wheel of Mr. Tenpenny’s half ton. But no one had died. No one had left us. Not even a dog.

Once, my eldest brother Geordie and I came across the carcass of a freshly killed young possum in the back woods. Its arms were raised above its head, as if in disbelief, stretching skyward. Beseeching. Whatever had killed it had ripped open its belly and eaten all its tender bits. My mother’s disappearance left us all like that. Gutted, hapless creatures flung unceremoniously into raw isolation.

Sometimes pain brings people together, helps them to cross the grand abysses of human discord. The lost are found. Sons reach out to fathers after years of silence. Sisters forgive brothers. Sometimes it’s too late.

Editorial Reviews

04/09/2018
Higdon’s debut novel is a finely observed chronicle of two women’s lives. In 1967, in a small town near Vancouver, 10-year-old Lulu Parson’s mother, Bette, and a neighbor go missing. Bette leaves a brief farewell note that Lulu finds and hides. Forty years later, Lulu is shaken when her brother hints that he has his own secret about their mother’s disappearance, but he dies before he can explain. Many tantalizing questions are raised by this opening, but the book turns away from the mystery surrounding the disappearances to focus instead on the consequences: how Bette’s family and community are wounded by loss, and how they heal from it. Bette’s absence haunts Lulu through her adolescence and into her adult life as a touring musician until a death and an unexpected inheritance draw her back home. She becomes close to Doris, a mute neighbor who raises chickens, sells eggs, and keeps the town’s secrets, and they both find peace in tending animals and being close to nature. Answers about the missing women do come, but the path that leads there is unhurried, and this novel will appeal to readers more interested in the journey than the destination. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Higdon’s debut novel is a finely observed chronicle of two women’s lives ... this novel will appeal to readers more interested in the journey than the destination.” — Publishers Weekly

“An ambitious debut novel that will make you cry, cringe, and laugh ... This small-town drama is jam-packed with revelations and sweet portraits that stick.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Canadian librarians in particular will want to pay attention to this debut.” — Booklist Online

“This wondrous book concerns more than mere detective work, expanding instead on the grander mysteries of love and hate, survival and destruction — and most powerfully, perhaps, of decades-long journeys home.” — Toronto Star

“Brutal and punishing with occasional grace notes, The Very Marrow of Our Bones is concerned with morbidity — both the human capacity for it and what people make of it when it becomes the raw material of their lives.” — Foreword Reviews

“Christine Higdon beautifully and honestly illuminates the devastating impact of loss and abuse. The Very Marrow of Our Bones refuses to sensationalize, treating its characters with empathy and respect. This hopeful story of kept secrets combines the page-turning intrigue of a mystery with the nuance of a literary novel.” — Attiya Khan, Co-Director, A Better Man

“Beautifully crafted debut. A story layered with secrets, masterfully revealed. Higdon is fearless, placing her characters on roads where one misguided turn changes everything. Deep-rooted need to escape, tangled with longing for home, leads to an end that is heartbreaking, hopeful and unforgettable.” — Heather Tucker, author of Clay Girl

“The Very Marrow of Our Bones is wise and fiercely tender, full of grief and longing and murky secrets. A beautifully written, marvellously assured debut.” — Jessica Westhead, author of Things Not to Do

“The Very Marrow of Our Bones is a wonderfully long rambling novel that struck me right where it counts — the heart ... I think ECW stands for ‘Everyday Continually Wonderful’ books.” — Owen Sound Sun Times

“Atmospheric and thoughtful, this book is a character study on childhood, attachments, secrets, loss, love, pain, grief and family.” — Open Book Post blog

From the Publisher

2018-02-06
An ambitious debut novel that will make you cry, cringe, and laugh.In 1967, two women—Bette Parsons, the mother of five, and Alice McFee—disappear from a rural town in Canada called Fraser Arm. The scars left by this mystery lay the groundwork for the novel. "Sometimes pain brings people together, helps them to cross the grand abyss of human discord," says Lulu Parsons, one of Bette's children, as she begins narrating the story years later. "Sometimes it's too late." Higdon lovingly excavates the truth behind the women's disappearance, a story buried beneath years of secrecy, trauma, and small-town drama—but does not hesitate to add plenty of salt to the wounds first. There are gaspworthy moments from the beginning to the very last chapter. Though the character count might seem intimidating, Higdon successfully fills Fraser Arm with complex characters who grow and change as the novel unfurls. For example, Doris Tenpenny, the preacher's daughter, who is mute but sees everything, is brilliant and unforgettable ("Apart from wild mushrooms, which are sometimes tricky to identify and occasionally poisonous, Doris thinks wild people are quite similar to wild food—likeable and interesting"). Her observations are key to understanding the rest of the town. For most of the book's length, the perspective pivots between Lulu's first-person narration and Doris' third-person point of view and follows the tale for five decades without being wed to a linear timeline. The reader is quickly drawn into the intimate details of the lives of the town's inhabitants, compassionately crafted and carefully doled out. From shame to sexual abuse to the undermentioned strain of motherhood, this debut novelist boldly takes on a lot. While the absent father is a tired archetype, a sympathetic story of an absent mother is rare.This small-town drama is jam-packed with revelations and sweet portraits that stick.

Kirkus Reviews