The long tendrils of a shocking act in an Amish community tangle up the fates of three women 12 years later in Jaclyn Gilbert's powerful novel, Butter Road.
In 2006, a gunman shot 10 students at school in Lancaster County, Pa., before taking his own life. In 2018, the victims and their families are still haunted by the tragedy. Emma Walsh is an 18-year-old in her rumspringa year prone to panic attacks--a relic of the day she was shot and witnessed her older sister, Beth, killed. Ruth Walsh, her mother, buries her anger in baking, Bible reading, and caring for her son, who has a genetic disease. Sara Caldwell, the non-Amish wife of a doctor researching genetic disorders among the community, searches for purpose in her childless, gilded life.
Chapters alternate among the three. Emma's first-person viewpoint is raw and unflinching in its vulnerability: "Where was the sense in our wounds?" Sara recruits Emma for housework and gardening, and a new world of books and ideas teases a freedom Emma never dreamed of. Ruth, meanwhile, resents Sara's secular influences on Emma; she cannot lose another daughter. The narrative arc is straightforward and uncomplicated, but there are time jumps (from 2018 to 2019) that require close attention. With exquisite prose, Gilbert excavates the layers of grief and regret that accrete in lives touched by horrific loss. Told with profound sensitivity toward the Amish community, Butter Road is an indelible meditation on sorrow, second chances, and the courage to choose. --Peggy Kurkowski, book reviewer and copywriter in Denver