4/5 stars
Sleeping Giants, by Rene Denfeld (2024)
TW: Child abuse and death, sexual assault, institutionalization, foster care
I saw this described as a "stressy and depressy mystery," which I think was pretty accurate! But as much as it is difficult, it's also hopeful, as well as incredibly well-written and researched. Denfeld does grappling-with-hard-things so well. I read her book, The Enchanted, which highlights the failures of the criminal justice system in the US, and absolutely loved it. Both books face head-on the failures of institutions that purport to protect/heal/support our citizens, whether they be convicted felons, or orphans in the child-protection system.
The novel opens with a young boy, Dennis, running towards a treacherous ocean in Oregon, with a man trailing after, trying to save him. His body is never discovered and he is presumed dead. Moving back in time, we learn that he was in the foster system since he was a baby, and was eventually sent to the nearby facility for young boys ("disturbed" and unwanted children), called Brightwood. There, he meets Ralph, the kindly custodian who befriends Dennis and becomes a sort of father-figure to him, for a time.
Meanwhile, a young woman named Amanda, who was adopted at birth, is learning about her birth mother, and discovers that she had a brother, Dennis, who died in Oregon. She travels to the small seaside town where Brightwood, long since closed, used to be located to search for more details. There, she teams up with Larry, a retired police officer, as they uncover the suspicious circumstances of Dennis' death, as well as other disappearances of other boys from Brightwood. Slowly, a web of hidden crimes and cover-ups begins to surface, including an archaic, torturous treatment called "holding time," which the director of Brightwood used liberally with many of the boys. In it, the subject is wrapped tightly inside sheets, blankets, or rugs for hours on end. This restraint therapy was meant to break the subject down, and reduce them to an infantile state, so they can be "reborn."
There's a lot of darkness in this story, yes. Denfeld is adept at pointing out the cracks in the foster care and criminal justice systems, unblinkingly calling our attention to the ways we must do and be better. But there's also a lot of beauty in the form of people who genuinely care about each other. In particular, the friendship that develops between Amanda and Larry, the many of the townspeople who support and love each other, and Amanda's own journey of self-discovery.
My only criticism is that there seemed to be a lot of extra stuff packed into the novel that didn't add much and kind of distracted from the main storyline. Amanda is a zookeeper... she's trying to find out more about the backstory of the polar bear she cares for... she travels to Alaska and, in a way-too-coincidental way, locates the polar bear's mother... also, Amanda clearly has some form of autism but just thinks she's weird... so at some point that is addressed and she starts to learn about therapies that can help with her impulses... It was just a lot. It felt like Denfeld was trying to tell a longer, more intricate story that utilized some sort of symbolism of the polar bear to mirror what she and her brother went through? But it didn't land. Either this book needed to be much longer, to make those connections, or shorter, to remove that portion altogether.
UP NEXT: The Book of Doors, by Gareth Brown
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