This is the first fiction I’ve read by Jeannette Walls, whose bestselling book, The Glass Castle, prompted my book club to issue the edict—no books about kids in jeopardy for hundreds of pages. They read The Glass Castle a few months before I joined and I haven’t yet read it; however, I did read Half Broke Horses, which tells the true but somewhat fictionalized story of Walls’ maternal grandmother—setting up the crazy that is Wall’s first memoir.
Though this is a novel, The Silver Star covers some familiar territory. Set in 1970, the story is narrated by Bean (Jean) Holliday and she and her older sister, Liz, are dealing with a mother who is entertaining at best but erratic and self-absorbed at worst. They have moved a lot over the years since every town has something their mother, Charlotte, can’t stand. When Charlotte takes off to Hollywood leaving the girls to fend for themselves, they assume she’ll be back in a few days or a week tops. However, when her absence grows to weeks, Bean and Liz decide to travel from California to Virginia to stay with their Uncle Tinsley.
The bus ride alone is an adventure, but when they arrive in Byler, Bean and Liz find their uncle living almost as a recluse. Tinsley Holliday once ran the mills that were the life blood of the town, but since being forced out by the new owners and the death of his wife, he has taken refuge in the beautiful but run down home that has been in the family for generations. However, as often the case, the sisters’ arrival helps Tinsley start to reconnect and he provides the girls with the first sense of stability they’ve ever known.
However, all is not going to go smoothly. There is a lot of tension in Byler due to the recent integration of the schools and Bean and Liz not only face this when they start school, but in a small town, the reputation of their mother precedes them. Also, early on, Bean and Liz look for work and end up working for the current foreman of the mill, a bullying but charismatic man named Jerry Maddox. A testament to the first person narrative here is that we see the danger long before Bean does and it’s hard to watch events move toward their inevitable conclusion.
Though I loved many of the characters in this book (and rooted for them!), this novel didn’t fully work for me. I can’t quite articulate why the pacing felt off and how sometimes the dialogue didn’t feel real. In another novelist’s hands, I would have been bawling at some of the unfairness of what Bean and Liz face. Here I was pretty dry-eyed. So, this is a perfectly fine novel, but it doesn’t cut as deep as Wall’s memoirs do