Birdie Chang left her New York apartment and her live-in girlfriend for Whidbey Island, the farthest place she could go to shake Cal. She rented an isolated cabin in the woods, turned off her cell phone, and dared him to keep communicating with her. On the ferry from Seattle to the island, she spoke to a guy about her age who seemed to know that she needed help, and offered it-he volunteered to snuff the one who's scaring her and she gave him his name, Calvin Boyer. What she didn't say was that he sexually abused her when she was nine and she was never the same.
Lindzie lived in Florida, in a house with her father. She was pretty in middle school and she caught the eye of her school bus driver's son who always sat in the front seat near his dad. She was flattered that Cal was interested in her-he was cute, he knew so many things, and he was in his twenties. When he raped her at thirteen, she thought it was love. Amazingly, at twenty two, she was chosen to appear on The Dating Game and became famous as the girl who could cry at any time. She revealed her sexual abuse on the show which got her eliminated, but also got her a ghostwriter. Her autobiography, My Turn, was heading up the charts when something happened that blew the deal up-and she knew her moment of stardom was over.
Mary-Beth, also from Florida, is Calvin Boyer's long suffering mother. She knows he had some girl trouble but doesn't really believe he's a pedophile. She has supported him when he was put in juvie, when he lived under the bridge with his ankle monitor, and now in a halfway home where he's finally getting the treatment he needs. Her sister tries to help her cope but feels that Cal destroyed Mary-Beth's life. That's why she drives down to comfort her when Cal is run over and killed in the middle of the night. Was it an accident or murder? And how will it affect these three women?
Madden, author of the literary autobiography Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, mines her life story for her first novel. This book is not for the faint of heart-horrible things happen to all of the characters and they are thrown into very fraught situations. The author uses shifting viewpoints and narrators to keep her audience unbalanced, while readers are glued to the book, as if watching a train wreck. And she has no problem breaking the fourth wall and personally addressing the reader with answers for them, if not for her characters. I can't say I enjoyed Whidbey but I certainly bought into the story and respect the way the author out-manipulated me. Read it if you dare!
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