Caroline Frost's impressive debut novel, Shadows of Pecan Hollow, provides a comprehensive look at a woman who, having experienced only rejection as a child, is taken in by a charming criminal until she finds the courage to break away.
Kit Walker, abandoned as a newborn and then shuttled between foster homes she repeatedly fled, experienced a childhood that was "not lived but endured." At age 13, she meets charismatic Manny Romero while trying to steal food from a Texas gas station. For years he treats her like a daughter, grooming her to serve as his partner in thefts, cons and, eventually, armed robbery. Manny gives Kit her first taste of stability and makes her feel that she is more than "a discarded girl with a made-up name." He also controls her with extreme kindness, followed by excessive cruelty (his "careful calm gave way to a bulldozing rage") and, when she matures, sex. Pregnant at 19, Kit refuses to have an abortion and finally leaves Manny. She and her daughter, Charlie, settle in the small Texas town of Pecan Hollow. Emotionally hampered, Kit struggles to be a good mother but knows she is not. Manny finds Kit after a 14-year prison stint, his propensity for violence and his controlling nature more intense than ever. When he learns Charlie is his daughter, Manny wreaks havoc on Pecan Hollow.
Although the plot momentarily stalls in the novel's midsection, Frost's skill at sculpting a character both sympathetic and prickly shines in Shadows of Pecan Hollow. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer