The Bright Forever

March 28, 2005
The halting, harrowing narrative of Martin's second novel (after 2001's Quakertown
) draws upon multiple voices to piece together a tragedy with its own slippery backstory. On a summer evening in an "itty-bitty" Indiana town in the 1970s, nine-year-old Katie Mackey rides her bicycle to the library and never comes home. Her father, Junior Mackey, owns the town's glassworks, and to the town's residents the Mackeys are like the Kennedys, envied for their looks, their wealth and their picture-perfect life. Peeling back the layers of his characters, Martin slips easily into their darker, secret lives—lives that may harbor clues to Katie's disappearance: Henry Dees, the reclusive math tutor who sometimes lurks in the Mackeys' house; Clare Mains, the widow shunned for remarrying out of loneliness; her galling husband, Raymond R., whose drug binges and blackouts occupy stretches of unaccounted-for time; Katie's parents, freshly tortured by their own tarnished past; and Katie's brother, 17-year-old Gilley, who seizes the chance to gain his father's approval by avenging Katie's death. Rich details and raw emotion mix as Martin, in engaging the human desire to excavate the truth, underscores its complex, elusive nature. Agent, Phyllis Wender.

May 15, 2005
In his new novel's opening chapters, Martin (creative writing, Ohio State Univ.; "Quakertown") creates an idyllic vision of a small Indiana town in the 1970s before exposing its sinister undercurrents. Katie Mackey is the nine-year-old daughter of the man who owns the glass factory, the town's main employer. One summer evening, she rides her bike to the public library to return some books and never returns. Suspects include Mr. Dees, the lonely and eccentric high school teacher who was tutoring Katie in math, and a construction worker named Raymond, who has befriended Dees and might in fact be blackmailing him. Even Katie's father and teenage brother are not who they seem. The events swim inside the heads of these characters, as well as that of Raymond's wife, Clare. Martin shifts back and forth in time, skillfully dropping clues, countering readers' expectations, and building tension. Combining elements of family fiction, psychological thriller, and small-town nostalgia, this book is written in lyrical prose that will engage readers of all types. Highly recommended for all fiction collections. -Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Libs., Harrisonburg, VA

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2005
Thirty years after the fact, a schoolteacher in a small Indiana town narrates this gripping tale of a crime and the lives it has forever changed. On a quiet evening in July, nine-year-old Katie Mackey leaves home for the library, and never returns. In chapters written in different voices and jumping back and forth between that day and four days later, the author carefully lays out his simple yet mesmerizing plot, gradually revealing the dark secrets held by those involved--secrets that, when woven together, propel the action to its seemingly preordained conclusion. The teacher, Henry Dees, is a lonely misfit who longs for a child of his own. His neighbor hides a drug addiction even from his wife, and his discovery of Henry's secret longings gives him a sense of power. This lethal combination leads to a horrendous crime that leaves Henry wracked with guilt, knowing he'll "always be living that summer in that town." Martin's novel is hard to put down, as these dark and intertwined lives march inexorably to tragedy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)