Category: Fiction
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN-13: 9780345494474
Pub. Date: January 2008
Edition: Reprint
Date Read: March 2008
Nadine Morgan is a globe-trotting journalist who pursues the truth no matter what the consequences but after she is brutally attacked on a reporting trip in Mexico she winds up back in her hometown of Cape Cod under the care of her father and his girlfriend.
Her life now consists of watching countless Law & Order episodes and assuring everyone around her that what she really needs is to go back to South Africa to continue her life as a reporter. Her injuries require rest so she tries to connect with her best friend but finds that Lily’s life is now fully engaged in being a mother and wife, things Nadine can’t relate to so the relationship is tenuous at best. Then there is the kind Dr. Duarte who’s taken an interest in Nadine. She finds herself attracted to him but still won’t accept that anything else can replace being a foreign correspondent.
Then while reading a newspaper she finds out that a local couple is heading to South Africa for their son’s murder trial. Though Nadine had never met Jason, she remembers what happened to him and had felt a connection to him. It seems only fitting that she be there with his parents when they take part in a Truth and Reconciliation hearing and so she leaves Cape Cod again.
While most of the narrative takes place in post-apartheid Cape Town, the author allows the reader to get to know Nadine, and while I could appreciate what drove Nadine to return to South Africa, I found it hard to understand and accept her fierce independence in light of what had happened in the beginning of the story.
I feel like this book could have been a great story and was flawed by the author wanting to put in too many issues. Then there were the different narrative styles and an odd plot twist at the end. Still, kudos to the author who easily pulled me into the story.