Caitlin Mullen’s unputdownable novel, Heather, opens with an immediate invitation to read on: a woman giving birth for the first time has given birth before, though no one apart from the attending doctor knows it. That’s because the body, of course, keeps score: “The mind is one thing, the little black box of Before locked tight. But the body is a traitor. The body undoes and reveals, has an agenda all its own,” the unnamed narrator thinks to herself as she brings a wanted child into the world.
Who is this woman, and why is she hiding a secret this huge from her apparently very attentive husband beaming at her in the delivery room? Is she Heather, for whom the book is named? We have no idea, but like Police Chief Callie Hauser, who grew up in the New Jersey Pine Barrens and has only recently returned, we badly want to know.
Callie has more than a few intriguing mysteries to solve: who is selling the drugs to local kids that they are overdosing on? Who was driving the car that hit her best friend, Jane, leaving her unable to walk without help? Where has Callie’s mother, Jenna, disappeared to? And who abandoned a baby thirty years ago in the nearby woods?
Callie’s investigations take precisely as long as Mullen’s book– a satisfying 335 pages. And although Callie can be unbelievably slow to recognize clue patterns or follow up on gut feelings, who has perfect vision when part of what we are coming to understand involves who we, ourselves, are? Callie is both obtuse and brave, boldly forging ahead to uncover who did what to whom long ago, and what it all means now.
That Callie is investigating crimes against other young women is a particularly compelling element of this rewarding story, as is her toughness as she manages sexism at work and dead animals left at her home, gory intimidation tactics that only push her to continue to seek the truth.
Although the answers to the mysteries of Heather are found in a tight-knit community of men, in the end, the book is about women and the ways that they keep the evidence: notebooks, yearbooks, photos, jewelry, and, finally, in their very bodies, keepers of the truth.