Haunted. This is how I feel after reading The Daisy Children, a book about a family suffering for generations under the weight of unthinkable tragedy that wiped out almost an entire generation after the natural gas explosion in 1937, in London, Texas, at a school as the school day was ending.
The ghosts of the children whose lives were obliterated without warning in a vicious disaster, whose families likely never recovered from their loss, whose potential never had a chance to blossom haunt the background of the story, impelling those still among the living to move forward despite their loss, to live and love again, and to find solace in a cruel world.
The specters of bitter and angry women unable to share their grief, thus relieving them of its burden and allowing them to move on in the mourning process to live a life full of all the blessings it can bestow to counterbalance the catastrophes it also deals out inhabit the pages of their story, begging to be exorcised.
The shadows of men struggling to be the pillars of strength they were expected to be while crumbling as surely as the walls of the destroyed schoolhouse crumbled under the weight of impossible expectations, finding little solace in their shared pain materialize as reminders of the full spectrum of the human condition.
And yet, the novel is entirely hopeful. There is healing. There is forgiveness. There is redemption. It's all possible, though not always easily accessible.
Full of memorable, likeable characters, The Daisy Children is a book that will remain with me, as all good spirits do.
