Synopsis

Seventeen-year-old Maggie Warshauer wants is to leave her stifled life in Filliyaw Creek behind and head to college. An outsider at school and uncertain of her own sexual identity, Maggie longs to start again somewhere new. Inspired by a long-dead biologist’s journals, scientific-minded Maggie spends her days sailing, exploring, and categorizing life around her. But when her beautiful cousin Charisse disappears on prom night and is found dead at the marina where Maggie lives, Maggie’s plans begin to unravel. A mysterious stranger begins stalking her and a local detective on the case leaves her struggling to hold on to her secrets—her father’s alcoholism, her mother’s abandonment, a boyfriend who may or may not exist, and her own actions on prom night. As the detective gets closer to finding the truth, and Maggie’s stalker is closing in, she is forced to come to terms with the one person who might hold the answers—herself.

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Excerpt

From Chapter 9

“What did you tell him?” Nat’s voice, never much of an instrument anyway, nearly disappeared in the slap of backwash against the dock. Out here at the end of B dock, I thought it would be quieter, but it’s never altogether quiet around water. I pressed the phone up tight against my ear.

“The same stuff.” I watched a heron lift one foot slowly and set it down slowly. “We were at OT, she showed up drunk. I said something about her dress being ripped.”

“He already knew about that. Hulky told him.”

Huh. “Well, Hulky couldn’t hardly keep inside his skin, looking at her.” I heard my own voice say that, like some of Dad’s old hillbilly talk.

The heron had its head pulled back as though it was going to stab something, then eased down and shook its neck-feathers. Nat didn’t say anything. I watched the bird and waited on him. First one to speak loses, so says Dad.

I waited some more, but I must have had more questions than Nat. “So what did you tell him?”

“Yeah, well, all that,” he said. “She was crying and messed up.”

“Did you tell him about what she did?”

“No.”

“Well, he must have known something, cause he was asking me about if we were close.”

“I told him Charisse followed you.” Nat was almost whining. “That’s all.”

“Oh, great.” I could see Vann putting that down in his little book.

“I just told him the truth. You took off and after a while she went the same direction, toward the lake. I never said anything before.”

“Why’d you now?”

“He was saying we looked good for it, Hulky and me. We were the last ones with her, the last ones to see her.” He was talking so fast I could hardly understand him. “We didn’t do anything to her. You know that. We shouldn’t look good for it. Anyway, Hulky probably told him too.”

I remember Vann asking, had I seen anyone when I was walking home.

Clouds underlit by lightning. Wisteria smell. Below the old plantation house, down by the fallen-in cabins, something white had come out of the woods and flashed past me. Big. I heard the leaves scatter, the drumbeat of hooves. It was one of the albino deer that show up around the lake—I realized that, even though my heart was hammering and I stopped on the path and listened before moving as quickly as I could down the hill to the lake, the wind banshee-howling in the shrouds of the sailboats.

“Anyway, they found her in your backyard.”

The great blue had stalked deeper into the water off the point. Now he was cocked like a gun—one foot up—then fast-fast he struck and brought up a good-sized fish.

“Some friend you are,” I said.

Review

This coming-of-age novel is coupled with an unreliable narrator, Maggie. Maggie is trying to figure out who she is in this small town with few friends and an obsession with nature fueled by a book by Carl Linaeus that details botany and insects and other parts of nature. Her living situation isn’t the best as her mother ran off when she was younger and she lives with her father on a houseboat. While this sounds like a wonderful life, plus it is a plus if she wants to study marine biology, things aren’t well as they could be with a father that tends to drink and become maudlin pining for his wife. But despite the dysfunctional family, it seems to work for them.

There is a mystery as to who killed Maggie’s cousin Charisse. The search and anticipation of waiting for the killer to be revealed is actually a twist in the tale at the very end and what you thought you knew to be true is not. While I may not have come to the same conclusion, I had my suspicions about how the story might end. There were multiple suspects, known and unknown, and the final revelation was not quite what I expected.

Maggie has a lot of angst for a teenager, but perhaps that is not surprising because she is a teenager and her actions and reactions were typical for someone of her age. She didn’t mind being alone but at the same time, she longed for friendships and perhaps even a boyfriend. Hopefully, things will change once she gets to college and into a larger town with more people. She is the kind of character that you want to see good things happen to in the future.

The story does flip around a lot and there are some chapters that were focused on nature or her adventures but didn’t do much to move the plot along. Perhaps they were designed to give us more insight into Maggie? I did find myself skipping through those chapters since I didn’t feel it added to the story but detracted it in a way. I also don’t think I would consider this a thriller. I do think it might be more literary fiction delving into symbolism for Maggie and her life.

Overall, it was an interesting read and we give it 4 paws up.

About the Author

Valerie Nieman’s In the Lonely Backwater is being called “not only a page-turning thriller but also a complex psychological portrait of a young woman dealing with guilt, betrayal, and secrecy.” To the Bones, her folk horror/mystery about coal country, was a finalist for the 2020 Manly Wade Wellman Award, joining three earlier novels, a short fiction collection, and three poetry books. She has published widely in journals and has held state and NEA fellowships. She graduated from West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte and retired as a creative writing professor at NC A&T State University.

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