Celebrating 25 Years of the North Carolina Literary Review
viral. Just for the record, there is no such Campbell County in North Carolina. The story thread continues with undercover Detective Victor Galloway from Atlanta, newly hired to investigate Latino-on-Latino crime and the recent homophobicinspired murder. Mary Crow’s job is to untangle the mess because the governor is concerned that a large corporation won’t relocate to Campbell County if some of their employees might be in jeopardy. Sallie Bissell’s in-depth characterizations are certainly believable – even characters like the wifebeating, child-terrorizing stepfather and others who don’t care what people think and who have more than enough warped justifications for their actions. The writer’s depiction of young Chase is splendid (he is my favorite character). His stepfather constantly tries to manhim-up, calling him a coward. The police peg him a liar and a bother. But no matter how bad the abuse and lack of support, Chase never gives up. I was cheering for him all the way, as if he were not only the little kid next door but the bravest one on the planet. He touches a mother’s heart. Likewise, the teenage sister looking at a future of unspeakable horror found the spirit and the resourcefulness to keep trying as long as possible. Deadliest of Sins may focus largely on children, but it is most definitely a strong adult suspense novel, which also takes on the tough moral issues people often don’t want to talk about. Sallie Bissell sets a fast pace throughout the book. Add to that a cast of both admirable and rotten-tothe-core characters, a smidgen of romance on the horizon, and a satisfying ending – in short, the kind of book suspense lovers are happy to find. n
MOOD INDIGO a review by Anna Jean Mayhew Moira Crone. The Ice Garden. Durham, NC: Carolina Wren Press, 2015.
ANNA JEAN MAYHEW is the author of The Dry Grass of August (Kensington Publishing Group, 2011; reviewed in NCLR Online 2012), which won the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction in 2011, was a finalist for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Book of the Year in 2012, is a Blackstone Audio Book, and has been translated into five languages. She is currently working on her second novel, Tomorrow’s Bread; the first chapter appeared in 27 Views of Charlotte (Eno Publishing) in the fall of 2014. Read more about her in an interview in NCLR 2013. MOIRA CRONE was born in Goldsboro, NC, and studied writing at Johns Hopkins University. She has published three short story collections and two other novels. For many years, Crone taught in the MFA Program in creative writing at Louisiana State University, directing the program from 1997 until 2002. In 2009, she received the Robert Penn Warren Award for fiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers for her body of work.
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The Ice Garden, Moira Crone’s dark, captivating new novel, shows how a child living with two parents can still be an orphan. Crone takes us into a shadowy world where the source of ten-year-old Claire McKenzie’s misery is her mentally ill mother, Diana. In the summer of 1961, Connor, Claire’s remote father, brings his wife and new baby home from the hospital. Claire notices her father’s silence, his mouth in a tight line, and that Diana shows no interest in the baby, immediately retreating to her bedroom for what is the beginning of a prolonged seclusion. Crone is a native of Eastern North Carolina, the coastal plain, and this tobacco country is reflected in her collection of short stories, What Gets Into Us (2006). In The Ice Garden, she reprises fictional Fayton, NC, Connor’s hometown, where Diana feels that Connor keeps her “in a cage” (69). She is apparently suffering from postpartum depression – a theme also found in Crone’s earlier novel, A Period of Confinement (1986). The diagnosis is implied by Diana’s impenetrable desolation after the birth of her second daughter; however, her erratic behavior has occurred in the past with frightening regularity, signifying a severe emotional disorder that cannot be explained away as “baby blues.” The baby is named Odile, but Claire quickly decides what her sister should be called: Sweetie. And Sweetie she becomes. Responsibility for her falls on Claire and Sidney, the “colored