Refuge by Merilyn Simonds (The Convict Lover; The Holding) examines the emotional pain and suffering an elderly woman endures after a lifetime pursuit of science leaves her in denial about her personal choices and relationships.
Piqued by curiosity and nagging suspicions, 96-year-old Cass MacCallum invites Nang Aung Myaing, a Burmese woman who says she is her great-granddaughter, to her remote island home in Newbliss, Ontario. Nang hopes to seek asylum as a refugee based on her family's Canadian roots. As Nang relates her violent and tortuous past, Cass reminisces about her own history, spanning three countries and two World Wars. She observes and defines human pain through the frozen faces of black-and-white photographs--a skill she inherited from her amateur naturalist father and carefully honed as a nurse--as she reconciles the hurt that arises from grief and loss.
Cass's need to confront her past honestly and Nang's search for refuge coalesce in a tense and emotionally wrought narrative. Simonds's attention to detail--her descriptive, poetic writing--connects the dots between all the major events of the 20th century through Cass's eyes. She pulls readers in and builds emotional tension, turning the fantastical into believable moments in her characters' lives. Cass's purity of belief in scientific observation becomes a metaphor for her search for human connectedness and refuge--both for herself and for Nang.
As Simonds writes, "Observe. Don't force a moment in the direction of your choosing; allow it to unfold as it will. Truth is rarely extracted, only revealed." --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant