REVIEW

Half Moon Lake, Kirsten Alexander

Reviewed By
Andrea Thompson

Louisiana 1913. Three young boys are enjoying their summer playing outside near the edge of the forest as their wealthy parents Henry and Mary entertain guests at the family lake house.   Next, the unthinkable happens.  The Davenports are well known and respected in Opelousas and the disappearance of their youngest child galvanizes the small community into action.  After an extensive search, it seems there can be no explanation other than that the four year has been kidnapped.  A substantial award is offered for Sonny’s return.

With reporters and locals both camping out and determined to track the family’s every move, the Davenports and their house staff hole up as they wait for the press to move on and for the public’s attention to be focused elsewhere.  During this time, reporter Tom McCabe inveigles his way close to the grieving family, striking up a friendship of sorts with the stricken Mary Davenport.  Being this close to money and influence is intoxicating for the young newsman who is keen to see a good result for the people he feels have fully accepted him into their circle of influence.

Two years of searching for their youngest child yields no results, and the Davenport family slowly disintegrates under the weight of their loss.  The astonishing news that Sonny has been located in another state comes with further upset. Another woman, Grace Mills is convinced that the child found wandering the countryside with a peddler is in fact her own missing son, Ned.

HALF MOON LAKE is a gently written novel about the divisions of societal class, and what it means to maintain your sense of self when what defines you is lost or otherwise stripped away.  This immersive work strides deep into the past, presenting both sides of the cultural divide with all of its imagined gentility, realized oppression and stoic endurance.  What is required from its readers is an investment in the family outcomes more than the solving of its mystery. The people we are reading of here are masters at making the best of a bad situation and this is shown best in the passages featuring the house staff and townspeople. All have an opinion on what might have happened, but not all are privy to the secrets the family need to be kept.

The reader will need to hunker down with HALF MOON LAKE as the story moves with great deliberation, which does give added weight to the years in between loss and discovery.  There is a curious lassitude in the actions of bystanders which might stir up a bit of reactive fire in the reader.  This unwillingness to step in sometimes when there is a great injustice playing out in front of you is an interesting concept that is intricately explored in this work.  The reasons for this again in this work relate back to societal power imbalances, and the importance of those in positions of influence to maintain a distance from those who do not.

Readers who appreciate a slow plot evolution in their drama novels will enjoy this atmospheric work of loss, the renewal of hope and the enormous investment a society has always needed to make in the protection of its children.  HALF MOON LAKE can seem at times to be something of a relentless trudge towards the finish line but once there, the reader will have much to reflect upon.

Author Kirsten Alexander has stated that she was inspired to write HALF MOON LAKE, a work of fiction, after learning of the real-life story of US pre-schooler Bobby Dunbar.  This is worth a few Wiki minutes of your time if you have not yet heard of this case.

 

Book Source Declaration
I received a copy of this book from the publisher or author.
BOOK DETAILS
BOOK INFORMATION
ISBN
9780143792062
Year of Publication
BLURB

'They said he was their boy. And so he was . . .'

In 1913, on a summer’s day at Half Moon Lake, Louisiana, four-year-old Sonny Davenport walks into the woods and never returns.

The boy’s mysterious disappearance from the family’s lake house makes front-page news in their home town of Opelousas. John Henry and Mary Davenport are wealthy and influential, and will do anything to find their son. For two years, the Davenports search across the South, offer increasingly large rewards and struggle not to give in to despair.

Then, at the moment when all hope seems lost, the boy is found in the company of a tramp.

But is he truly Sonny Davenport? The circumstances of his discovery raise more questions than answers. And when Grace Mill, an unwed farm worker, travels from Alabama to lay claim to the child, newspapers, townsfolk, even the Davenports’ own friends, take sides.

As the tramp’s kidnapping trial begins, and two desperate mothers fight for ownership of the boy, the people of Opelousas discover that truth is more complicated than they’d ever dreamed . . .

Review Half Moon Lake, Kirsten Alexander
Andrea Thompson
Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Add new comment

This is a book review site, with no relationship whatsoever with any of the authors mentioned here.

We do not provide a method for you to contact authors for any reason and comments of this nature are automatically deleted.

This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.