The Noah Confessions (review)

Expecting a car for her sixteenth birthday, Lynne is disappointed when all she gets is a battered old charm bracelet that once belonged to her deceased mom. By way of explanation, her father also gives her a long letter that Lynne's then sixteen-year-old mother wrote to a boy named Noah, which plunges Lynne into her parents' Southern Gothic past, a past utterly alien from the posh L.A. lifestyle she has always enjoyed. She learns that her mother's father was a social climber, an arsonist, and a murderer, and that her parents' first connection was through the tragic disappearance of the initial owner of her birthday bracelet—a wild young girl, a cousin of Lynne's father's, who babysat for Lynne's mother and got too close to her grandfather's secrets. She also learns how her father tried unsuccessfully to rescue her mother from her circumstances, but he was only able to give her the courage to eventually break away from a past that threatened to engulf her in a cycle of lies and denial. Indeed, Hall depends overmuch on the crazy Southern woman motif—Lynne's two grandmothers and one great grandmother all succumb to some form of insanity—but the train wreck of their past is too fascinating to look away from. Lynne's response to the revelations is random yet dramatically appropriate for an L.A. girl suddenly confronted with ghosts that threaten her genetic stability; she tests her own mettle against the sea and ends up nearly drowning in a surfing accident. Her near-death experience brings her into contact with her mother, who offers some affirmations on how she should live that empower Lynne to help her dad lay his own ghosts to rest. The life-affirming ending thus balances the bone-chilling melodrama of dark family secrets; fans of Carol Plum-Ucci will appreciate this dramatic and emotional story.